Why Music and Movement are Vital for Children:
- Why is music so attractive to children
- Why is music so well suited to children?
- Movement to music
- Children require and enjoy movement, which is essential for their development and growth.
- Music is a language, and children are oriented toward learning language.
- Music evokes movement
- Lyric discussion
- Parent-Child interaction
Music engages the brain while stimulating neural pathways associated with such higher forms of intelligence such as:
- Abstract thinking
- Empathy
- Mathematics.
Music is an aural art and young children are aural learners.
Music is perfectly designed for training children's listening skills.
Developmentally appropriate music activities involve the whole child and the child's desire for:
Music transmits culture and is an avenue by which beloved songs, rhymes, and dances can be passed down from one generation to another.
- Since ears are fully mature before birth, infants begin learning from the sounds of their environment before birth.
- Good listening skills & school achievement go hand in hand.
- Language
- The body's urge to move
- The brain's attention to patterns
- The ear's lead in initiating communication
- The voice's response to sounds
- The eye-hand coordination associated with playing musical instruments
- Children often do not have the words to express themselves and need positive ways to release their emotions.
- Music is a social activity which involves family and community participation.
- Children love to sing and dance at home, school, and at church.
Overall Goals of art and music therapy
For hospitalized children and adolescents:
- Encourage the self-expression of thoughts and feelings related with illness/hospitalization
- Help children process and work through traumatic experiences associated with hospitalization
- Facilitate positive self-esteem and positive body image
- Promote a sense of independence and feelings of control
- Provide peer interaction and a sense of community within the hospital environment
- Encourage the development of healthy strategies for coping with hospitalization
For children and adolescents living with chronic pain or chronic illness:
- Encourage the self-expression of thoughts and feelings related with chronic pain/illness
- Facilitate children/adolescents' understanding of how chronic pain/illness affects their lives
- Understand how situations may increase pain perception and/or stress
- Learn effective techniques to promote self-management of chronic pain
- Learn effective techniques to self-manage stress and anxiety related to chronic illness
- Facilitate the process of acceptance for children struggling with a chronic condition
For children with newly acquired physical limitations:
- Facilitate adaptation to physical limitations
- Promote problem-solving skills
- Facilitate hand-eye coordination and gross motor skills
- Encourage non-verbal communication skills
For children recovering from brain injury:
- Raise awareness and orientation to things such as time, date and place
- Increase attention-span and decrease frustration level
- Follow step-by-step
directions more easily - Organize thoughts to make independent decisions
- Facilitate the process of representing thoughts symbolically
- Encourage the process of cause and effect problem solving
Research on the effects of music on learning has been in progress for decades. When research on the Mozart Effect - the theory that listening to Mozart's music can temporarily improve performance, and perhaps even IQ.
As with most theories, critics' verdicts on the Mozart Effect have been controversial. But what is not generally controversial though, and is supported by a strong body of evidence, is the fact that ongoing music education does help children across a wide range of criteria - including overall academic performance. A Canadian research group from McMaster University compared two groups of six children between the ages of 4 and 6; one group took Suzuki music lessons and the other had no musical instruction. The results: showed that the children who received musical instruction excelled above their peers in memory skills as well as 'non-musical' abilities such as literacy, mathematics and even IQ.
Brigid Finucane, an Early Childhood Music Instructor at the Merit School of Music in Chicago, has witnessed the positive effects of music instruction first-hand. "Formal music instruction requires focus, discipline and determination – excellent qualities which are often transferred into other areas of the student's life,” she says. “Beat and rhythms are key components in music. Children who can maintain a steady beat have a greater fluency in their reading. The music we sing provides vocabulary enrichment, teaches tenses and plurals, uses poetic language, allows visualization, and encourages good pronunciation.
"Through music we learn about ourselves, our culture and that of others, science and math, creativity, jobs, the environment, celebration & emotions."
Scott Cross, the Educator Development Manager for Kindermusik International, also believes that the non-musical benefits of music classes spill over into academic achievement.
"Kindermusik classes help toddlers as music is used to help them understand concepts like high and low, fast and slow, and start and stop. Reading music notes from left to right reinforces their learning of reading words from left to right in a book. Counting out music (1, 2, 3, 4) and keeping a steady beat reinforces the role of numbers and helps a child better understand their first math concepts."
The benefits of music instruction are not limited to the early years.
According to the National Association for Music Education:
SAT takers with a background involving musical instruction score significantly higher than their non-musically trained counterparts – a surprising 56 points higher on the verbal portion and 39 points higher on the math portion of the test. Other advocates of music instruction also cite numerous non-musical benefits including the building of greater self-esteem, concentration and coordination. And the longer music instruction lasts, the greater the benefits.
Music Therapy goals may include:
- Emotional support
- Procedural support
- Fine and gross motor development
- Pain/anxiety management
- Normalization of environment
- Socialization
- Legacy creation/memory building
- Developmental support
- Sensory stimulation
- Family support
- Coping
- Self-expression and awareness
Music Therapy techniques may include:
- Songwriting
- Instrument Improvisation
- Movement to music
- Music assisted relaxation
- Singing
- Interactive music making
- Lyric discussion
- Parent-Child interaction
Posts
0 Comments