What I love about Kindermusik!

By 88 Keys Team

Benefit of early childhood music to a family

By 88 Keys Team

Music is the Language of Learning

By 88 Keys Team

For many years, I’ve been looking for the words to describe why music is such an important presence in a child’s early development. There’s the brain research, yes. Compelling and interesting, however it’s kind of gross to talk about a child’s mind in terms of neural networks and neuron firing.

There’s the scientific proof, yes. Studies previously performed on Kindermusik students show positive growth in intellectual and self-control behaviors. Still, some educators and experts can’t be swayed by even the most convincing studies. I think it’s just the way some people are wired.

For me, though, I finally yawped out a “Eureka!” when I realized what preschool teachers have known all along…

Music is inherent to the methods used in early learning. Repetition, rhyme, exposure to patterns, and a variety of sounds are defining qualities of both music and early learning. That’s likely why music and language share the same pathways in the brain.

That’s why, to a child, music is the language of learning.

-by Molly McGinn

The Younger, the Better

By 88 Keys Team

Some people are quite surprised to find out that Kindermusik is for children as young as newborns. Really, what can such a young child gain from starting in a music and movement program like Kindermusik as an infant or toddler?

The following statement, jointly issued by The National Association for Music Education (MENC), the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC), and the US Department of Education, helps explain just how important music education can be for even the youngest musicians…

The Value of Music for the Very Young
The idea that very early education provides great long-term benefits has been rendered incontestable by studies in cognition and early learning. Research in developmental psychology and commonsense observation underscore both the importance and the wisdom of making music an integral and overt part of the earliest education of young children:

[M]usic is among the first and most important modes of communication experienced by infants.
As young children grow and develop, music continues as a basic medium not only of communication, but of self-expression as well.
As preschool children not only listen to and respond to music, but also learn to make music by singing and playing instruments together, they create important contexts for the early learning of vital life skills.
Guided music experiences also begin to teach young children to make judgments about what constitutes “good” music, thereby developing in them the rudiments of an aesthetic sense.

Music contributes strongly to “school readiness…”
- excerpted from a report issued by the Early Childhood Music Summit, June 2000.

Relax to Music

By 88 Keys Team

Just as your child needs stimulation and engagement in age-appropriate activities, she also needs periods of relaxation. This is one of the reasons why Kindermusik Village and Our Time classes include Quiet Time in every class. But a “quiet time” isn’t only for young children; it’s also beneficial for older children as well. And times set aside for relaxation are just as important at home as they are in the Kindermusik classroom.

Creating regular quiet times at home gives your child practice in learning to calm herself, slow her pace, and relax. Plus it helps her develop a valuable lifelong skill – the skill of learned relaxation. Slow, gentle music can best provide an environment most conducive to relaxation.

So take a few moments to relax and listen to some beautiful music. You’ll love how good it makes you – and your child – feel!

By Theresa Case