Music & Movement
Infants
- Music is inborn. For months before they make their appearance in the world, children are rocked to-and-fro in the womb to the accompaniment of their mother's heartbeat. The development of the child's heart marks the beginning of a rhythmic sequence that will continue for a lifetime.
- From birth to three months is a vitally important period in the infant's musical-spiritual development. It is your heartbeat she will miss the most, so continue this experience by holding her close to your heart. Your baby is accustomed to feelings associated with your movement all day long. So these experiences need to be continued through touching, holding, snuggling and rocking. Extend the experience of this physical contact by speaking softly, cooing or singing to her. You don't need to have a beautiful voice or be a professional performer because babies prefer simple melodies and soft sounds. This is also the time to introduce classical music. These special recordings are readily available.
- As soon as babies can grasp and hold objects, they enjoy making sounds by banging, shaking and dropping them. This discovery, that they can make noise in different ways, is the beginning of musical expression. The baby's own body is a fantastic musical instrument. Very young children can make sounds with their tongues and lips as well as with their hands and feet.
Toddlers
Learning to walk does far more than giving a child a new way to get around. It opens a new world, one filled with opportunities for exploration. Now your child can reach for, touch, grasp and hold a fascinating variety of objects. He can be physically connected to whatever attracts his attention. His increasing ability to move about combined with his language development makes his world more and more stimulating and interesting. Hearing and making sounds are essential aspects of that expanding world. But there is more to it. Your child needs to recognize and purposefully respond to sounds by naming them and moving to the feelings they awaken.
Three- & Four-Year-Olds
The preschool years provide endless opportunities for children to become aware of their world and how they are connected to it. An essential aspect of this development is an awareness of sounds. Sounds are ever-present during our waking hours. Some of these sounds are made by:
- your child
- weather
- other people
- nature
- machines
- music
Some sounds are pleasant and some unpleasant. Some are loud and others soft. Sounds may be used to issue a warning or a command like the word "stop" or the sound of a siren. Sounds can sooth us and help us relax. But the most powerful and universal sounds are music.
The distinguishing feature of music is rhythm. Children can easily recognize rhythm in their own movements. Walking, jumping, stomping, clapping and knocking are rhythmic activities. You can help your child become more aware of these body rhythms by chanting with the movement and varying the speed from slow to fast and the dynamics from soft to loud. This provides a natural flow of experience to more advanced musical awareness such as accented beats.
An important part of children's early learning is the awareness of their bodies as movement instruments. This is accomplished through guided exploration. You provide images that help the child imagine how things move and then encourage them to respond by moving.
For example, you can use a balloon to demonstrate moving up and down. First, blow up the balloon, then reach as high as possible and release it.
Challenge the child to watch what happens as you repeat by saying something like, "When I blow it up, it goes up, higher and higher and when I let go, it goes down, down, down until it collapses on the floor."
Progress to the child's being the balloon and then move on to how the movements feel. "How does it feel to be blown up and how does it feel to collapse?"
Challenge the child to verbalize what she is doing and how it feels. Feelings and language development are essential parts of any activity.
Your child will fill your home with movement and when you fill it with music and creative ideas, it will be the richest place in the world. The books we have listed in the book list contain a wide variety of movement themes. A number of these themes have been listed in the following section entitled "Images, Actions, and Concepts."
Images, Actions and Concepts:
Miniature keyboards provide an excellent introduction to musical elements. Your playing a musical instrument, anything from a simple improvised drum to a piano provides a fun-filled way for your child to rhythmically respond. And a wide variety of prerecorded songs and nursery rhymes can be found in bookstores and toy stores. Singing along with these may offer you a place to begin, but don't be limited by what you can buy. Be creative! Sing traditional songs and make up songs about:
- animals
- growing things
- family members
- feeling
- what you are doing
- where you are going (from room to room outdoors, in the car)
Don't forget lullabies, both traditional and ones you create. The soothing sound of your voice and the quiet rhythm of your singing helps your child make the transition from wakefulness to sleep.
Giving a young child an awareness of music is a gift that lasts a lifetime. It provides a foundation for a lifelong love of music and is the basis for any future musical training. It is an investment on your part, but the joy it brings richly rewards the effort. It is truly a gift that will keep on giving.