We recognize childrenīs music as a powerful means of encouraging cooperation and building self-esteem. Children often feel competent when they participate in musical activities. Singing, dancing, or moving in response to music appears to work wonders for brightening children's moods and encouraging the development of bodily kinesthetic intelligence.

 

Music helps children develop many skills, including remembering lyrics and tunes, adding appropriate actions, a sense of sequence or even composing new words for a well-known melody. Learning songs also promotes children's knowledge about their environment (counting songs, songs about animals, the alphabet, etc) and listening to music from other cultures are good examples of this type of learning.

 

Recent brain research tells us that when children sing and move to music, their developing brains are entirely engaged and stimulated. Both the left and right sides of the brain are activated when we sing. And the process of singing stimulates both new learning and memory. For example, music has been shown to help children remember their addresses and phone numbers. Even adults can often remember the songs from their childhood days.

 

Like music, language has a rhythm. As we talk, our speech has a beat and a tempo. Like a line of music, a spoken sentence has a cadence as it rises and falls. Hence it is not surprising that language learning is enhanced when children experience the rhythm of music. Studies has shown that a child's ability to clap or tap a steady beat was directly linked to language learning. For example, clapping or tapping the rhythm of an unfamiliar word often helps children learn new vocabulary.