From playing Mozart to babies in the womb to singing nursery rhymes and playing rhythm games with toddlers, music has long been considered essential in early childhood development.
Today, we'll look at how you can incorporate music into your child's play in the early years and consider five reasons why music is so important in early childhood.
How To Incorporate Music Into Play
There are lots of ways to incorporate music into early years play both passively and actively.
By looking for opportunities to introduce children to a wide variety of musical styles it's possible to incorporate music organically into a child's daily routine.
Some effective ways to expose children to music and encourage children to listen to a wider variety of music include:
- Playing music to babies before and after birth
- Introduce children to music from different cultures
- Sing nursery rhymes with children
- Let children make music with simple instruments
- Sing songs and rhymes in other languages
- Play rhythm games involving clapping and gestures
Each of these activities exposes young minds to music and invites children to think about the structure, composition, and sound of music at an early age.
5 Reasons Why Music Is Important In Early Development
Understanding how music supports early childhood development is key to using it effectively in play and exploration.
Here are five ways in which music supports healthy development in children from birth.
1. Develops Motor Skills
Making music can help very young children to develop their fine and gross motor skills. Many of the ways that we start making - and enjoying - music as children, including clapping, tapping, bouncing, and dancing, help children to develop the motor skills that act as the stepping stones to the next big milestones of childhood development.
2. Improves Literacy And Numeracy
Listening to music at an early age can help children to build early literacy and numeracy skills. Listening to nursery rhymes develops children's ability to decode sounds and identify patterns in words, as well as predict how to put these patterns in a sequence - skills that are vital for later literacy and numeracy.
3. Expands The Imagination
Just as children who hear more words at a young age are often faster to babble, children who hear more music are more likely to copy the sounds they hear and engage in play that involves making up their own rhymes, dances, and rhythms.
4. Boosts Happiness
Children listening to music at an early age are able to enjoy and appreciate music just like adults do. Music can make children happier and create lasting positive memories around songs, rhymes, and melodies that create a positive foundation for life.
5. Develops Vocabulary
The enduring popularity of nursery rhymes is no doubt partially because of the positive effect that sharing nursery rhymes has on a child's developing vocabulary.
Singing nursery rhymes to a child, and encouraging them to sing along with you, can introduce children to new words and encourages them to use their verbal communication skills to form connections with others.
For more advice on how to support a child’s early years education, explore more of our blogs at Jacaranda Early Education.
