Enjoying Music with Your Elementary Age Child

(Ages Five to Twelve)

• Continue to sing and memorize songs and poetry with a strong rhythm and rhyme.
• Play musical games with your child involving math, spelling and reading.  They can learn ABC's, multiplication, The 50 States by singing them!
• While driving in the car, play musical guessing games such as "Name that Tune."
• Play guessing games that require recognizing the different instruments of the orchestra.
• Take your child to age-appropraite symphonies, musicals, ballets or chamber orchestras.
• Rent movies about music and musicians and watch them as a family. 
• Organize a yearly talent show in the neighborhood.
• Play music from the Baroque or Classical periods while children do their homework.

Enjoying Music with your Teens

Today's teens usually have strong music preferences whether that be the lastest pop, country or even classical.  Yes, some teens love classical!

Here are some ideas to share music with your young musician.

• Take your teen to more sophisticated concerts.  If possible, arrange for a backstage tour.  Check out your local university or college for free or low cost concerts of different genres.
• Arrange for your teen to meet with a real composer.
• For holidays and other special occasions give musical gifts-subscriptions to concerts, plays or symphonies.  Encourage grandparents to give tickets to a symphony or musical.
• Hold family music recitals and allow your teen to "show off."

Make your home a musical training center!

Enjoying Music with Your Preschooler

(Ages Two to Five)

• Provide all kinds of rhythm instruments for your child to experiment with.
• Purchase age-appropriate CD players and teach your child how to use them.  Let her start her own music collection.
• Give children scarves, feathers, or ribbons and turn on classical music and let them dance, sing and improvise to the music.
• Play clapping games to see if they can match a variety of simple and complex rhtyhms.
• Read to and help your child memorize all kinds of poems and Mother Goose rhymes that have a strong musical rhythm.
• Read stories about great composers, instruments of the orchestra, and general music books.
• Play marches in the morning as your child is getting ready for the day.  She will enjoy marching to the bath, to dress or to eat.  The strong rhythmic beat will help her accomplish these tasks with ease as well as keep her focused on the task at hand.
• Play music for your child throughout the day.
• Play classical music while your child is going to sleep at night and when she is getting up in the morning.
• Enroll your child in group music classes.

Enjoying Music with your Baby

(Birth to Age Two)

Music education doesn't just begin at birth.  It begins during the nine months of gestation!  Hearing is the first fully developed sense of a baby, being developed while in the womb.  The unborn baby can hear voices, especially mom's and music.

It is important to introduce newborns to music as well.  Here are some suggestions for getting music into the newborn baby's day.

• Sing or play songs to your newborn as often as possible throughout the day, especially while you are bathing, dressing, and feeding him.
• At night, play soothing classical music or vocal lullabies as he falls asleep.
• Play musical games and fingerplays.  Clap the beat as you sing and take his hands and clap the beats along with him.
• Purchase age-appropraite musical toys and rhythm instruments.  Xylophones, bells and rattles are wonderful beginning instruments.
• As you sing to your child, vary the tempo, the softness, and the loudness.  Make your voice go up and down from low sounds to high sounds.
• Expose him to age-appropriate musical experiences and classes offered in the community.

"Music has the Power to Change Us."

Book Review:  Good Music Brighter Children, by Sharlene Habermeyer

In the book, Good Music Brighter Children,  Sharlene Habermeyer explores the scientific research on the effects music has on the brain, how to set the tone with music in your home, being an advocate for music education in our schools and then lists great resources for exposing great music and musical experiences to our children.

Introducing children to good music can:

• Accelerate language development
• Improve math and science skills
• Enhance physical coordination
• Strengthen memeory and reading retention
• Benefit children with learning diabilities

Did you know: "Scientists have found that music involves both left, right, front, and back portions of the brain, which explains why people can learn and retain information more readily when it is set to music."  Children learn better with music.  We have seen that with how quickly little children can learn nursery rhymes and their ABC's set to music. 

Did you know:  "When children expend the consistent effort required to learn a musical instrument, they discover that the discipline of this day-to-day task will affect how they approach their other responsibilities in life, such as the effort they put into their school studies or the degree of diligence they give to the development of other talents."

Did you know:  "Listening to classical music can increase memory and concentration, and studying a musical instrument has been shown to increase spatial reasoning."   

Did you know:  "Additionally, studying a musical instrument helps develop imagination, invention, creative thinking, communication, and teamwork skills - precisely those attributes needed for a twenty-first century global work force."

Music education develops creativity, critical thinking skills and leadership qualitities needed in today's technological society.  Hungary, Japan and the Netherlands have come out on top for science proficiency of their students.  What do these countries offer in their schools that we don't?  For one thing - training in music and the arts!

There are many ways to expose our children to music.  Starting before birth, we can play different types of music in our homes.  We can enroll our children in music classes even before they are ready to learn an instrument.   Then when they are old enough, about 5-7 years old, we can give them instruction on learning a specific instrument.   We can also expose them to ballets, operas, orchestras and concerts.  There are always free or low cost activities in the community or we can play great CD's and watch DVD's.  Habermeyer lists her favorite resources for you to find at the library or music store.

"Music whispers to us dim secrets that startle our wonder as to who we are, and for what, whence and whereto."  -Ralph Waldo Emerson

Book Review: Nurtured by Love a New Approach to Education by Shinichi Suzuki

"Talent is not inherited or inborn but trained and educated.  Genius is an honorific name given to those who are brought up and trained to high ability."

Nurtured by Love is part biography and part education philosophy.  It tells of how Suzuki developed his education philosophy from his birth in Japan, growing up in his father's violin factory, teaching himself to play the violin at 17 years of age, studying the violin in Berlin for 8 years and being mentored by great men such as Einstein and finally returning to Japan to begin his own teaching career and stumbling upon his method of teaching little children to play the violin.  He believes all children are born with music ability just as they are born with the ability to learn their native language. Children should learn everything, including music, in the same way-naturally, step by step.

The goal of the Suzuki's Talent Education method is to prepare children to be noble men and women who have good and loving hearts.  He states, "A true artist is a person with beautiful and fine feelings, thoughts and actions." 

"Talent is no accident of birth.
In today's society a good many people seem to have the idea that if one is born without talent, there is nothing one can do about it, and they simply resign themselves to what they consider to be their fate.  Consequently they go through life without living it to the full or ever knowing life's true joy.  That is man's greatest tragedy."

Learning a musical instrument is hard work and requires discipline and time.  But everyone can learn and develop their musical potential.  Suzuki believed everyone learns at a different pace and one child might need to practice 5,000 times before he can play a certain piece.  The next child might need to practice 15,000 times before he can play the same piece.  But all children can learn and achieve.

One thing that is evident reading Nurtured by Love is that Suzuki had a great love for children and his love inspired children to grow and be the best they could be.  As parents and teachers, we can inspire our children to grow and reach their potential by believing in them, encouraging them and loving them.