WHY MUSIC IS IMPORTANT FOR
CHILDREN
because music is nonjudgmental. There is no right or wrong, it just is what it is. Listening to different types of music nurtures self-esteem and encourages creativity, self-con?dence, and curiosity. Music helps develop children's listening skills: Music encourages the ability to listen and thus to concentrate. Songs encourage speech and auditory discrimination. Through music, children learn to hear tempos, dynamics, and melodies. Listening for loud and soft, up and down, fast and slow encourages auditory development in the brain.
Music helps develop children's language skills: When young children listen to familiar words in songs, the neural transmitters in their brains are ?ring away, and their brains are building connections to the sounds they are hearing and the words they are singing. Singing songs and reciting poems and rhymes with children helps them develop early literacy skills. Keeping a steady beat develops language. Clapping hands, stamping feet, and using rhythm instruments in time to music develops important prereading skills. Young children recognize words, sounds, rhythms, tones, and pitches long before they talk, sing, or dance. So, the more music your children have in their lives, the better they will speak and read. Music helps develop children's selfesteem: Music is a wonderful way to address the many needs of children
Music helps stimulate children's brain connections: A recent study from the University of California found that music trains the brain for higher forms of thinking. For example, researchers believe that music affects spatial-temporal reasoning (the ability to see part-whole relationships). A study conducted by psychologist Frances Rauscher of the University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh and physicist Gordon Shaw of the University of California at Irvine speci?cally links the study of music to necessary brain development. They demonstrated that preschoolers who were given early exposure to complex multi-sensory stimulation—in this case, musical keyboard lessons and group singing—scored higher on tests measuring spatial reasoning, a skill used later in math, science, and engineering.
Music helps develop children's math skills: A simple song can include basic math skills such as counting, repeating patterns, and sequencing.