Music and Movement Experiences Meet the Needs of the Child.

Lorna Lutz Heyge, Ph. D.

 

 

Music-making is active and joyful! Psychological studies tell us that a child’s primary learning motivation comes from being in a pleasant and non-threatening environment. Moving to music, playing instruments, and listening to music are all naturally joyful experiences for children and adults alike.

When immersed in a musical environment, children find their own unique ways to make music, especially when other children, teachers and family members participate. Moreover, in a world so replete with be-alone activities, playing together musically is an ideal medium for children and adults to grow together.

           Positive contact and interaction with a caring adult is the single most important ingredient for a child’s healthy development. Nothing pleases very young children more than having a parent/caregiver share an experience with them. Adults benefit as well, as they witness the magic of music, movement, and song and realize just how appropriate and enjoyable simple activities shared with their children can be.

All children are musical.

Children are innately musical and have an inborn ability to sing and move rhythmically. Body movement is a natural outlet for expressing feeling and is very closely tied to human expression. When toddlers move to musical sounds they are communicating their feelings and perceptions of the world. Children communicate effectively with body language long before they can communicate with spoken language, and adults gain a privileged glimpse into the inner world of childhood when observing a toddler’s movements.

           Research and experience tell us that the earlier a child is in an environment of active music-making, the more likely that child’s inborn musicality will be awakened and developed. When surrounded by music and musical instruments and allowed to participate actively in a musical environment, children learn to make music both freely and naturally.

Music makes a difference.

Here at the dawn of the 21^st century, music is once again being valued as part of a well-rounded education. Researchers, teachers, parents, and educational leaders are all coming to the same conclusion: music makes a significant difference in the lives of children. Music improves overall development, decreases learning problems, and enhances brain functioning — all in a learning environment that fosters the building of community. Through music we touch the whole child and can make a positive impact on the child and family.

Music-making belongs in the family.

The time to start experiencing music is in early childhood; the place is in the family. Home is the first and most important school for children, and involved parents are the most effective teachers.

           Many well-meaning parents have been led to put their faith in sophisticated “things” rather than to trust their own natural instincts. Moreover, things have supplanted the simple joys of being with each other.  However, we are seeing an exciting breakthrough for early childhood music — public awareness about the benefits of music for children and families is on the rise.  Adults are learning how to interact effectively and easily with children through music, and families are growing together musically. This is good for children and good for families.

For the young, life is a celebration.

For the young child every day is new, fresh, exciting, and filled with new people, things, and events.  Events that appear prosaic and ordinary to us as adults are a never-ending source of wonder and engagement for the child.  With no sense of time but the present, the children live each moment completely.  The smallest happening is a momentous event for which there is no precedent in their life experience.

            Children’s intuitive intelligence is superbly tuned to the living world around them.  They possess an extraordinary capacity for assimilation and have an innate ability to observe the tiniest things, which hardly even exist for the adult.  These capacities of early childhood will never be repeated in life with the same clarity and ease.  The child’s perception of and identification with all life forms and events will never again be possible with the same spontaneous enthusiasm.

            Young children grow and develop as whole human beings in a “doing” environment.  Sensory-motor exploration forms and sustains their intellectual life.  Making learning a part of everyday living makes it relevant, interesting, accessible, and integrated.

            All aspects of learning are greatly enhanced when music is a key element in a holistic approach.  Research shows that when music, movement, and language are integrated, the benefits are incalculable, both intellectually and psychologically.  To this end it is necessary to observe children in different settings and in all seasons and to let ourselves be guided by what they are trying to tell us.

The Foundation for Music-Based Learning

The Foundation for Music-Based Learning (founded in 1993) is a nonprofit educational and charitable corporation which encourages and supports individuals and organizations in research, development, and outreach pertaining to music- and movement-based learning. Early Childhood Connections: Journal of Music- and Movement-Based Learning, is the quarterly interdisciplinary publication which the Foundation publishes with the goal of stimulating discussion and application regarding the music, movement, and language development of young children.  Broad-based and interdisciplinary in scope, Early Childhood Connections presents current research, pedagogical viewpoints, and diverse approaches to educational reform in a context that increases awareness of the developmental needs of young children while nurturing a lifelong love of learning.

Following are excerpts from articles in Early Childhood Connections.

Linda Robinson, early childhood music educator in Kentucky, USA, writes in the summer 2002 issue:

Why is music and movement so effective in teaching children – not only in the music classroom but in the other arts and regular classrooms?  

Consider the following ideas:

• Musical activities are multi-sensory experiences which involve the children in seeing, hearing, moving, and feeling beat, rhythm, line, and form.  More than one sense is continually engaged in the musical experience.
• Young children are still whole-child learners, and music and movement involve the whole child in learning.  The child’s whole body gathers sensory input from the musical experience, whose very structure helps the brain organize the information it is receiving.
• Music invites repetition.  Through repetition of songs and musical experiences, children learn the material well enough to begin experimenting with their own ideas that will further extend the experience.  The children’s creative expressions and input can be incorporated into these activities over a period of time, thus enhancing the children’s ownership of the learning process.
• Music and movement constitute a group experience rather than an individual performance. The children are part of something larger than the self, and they are encouraged and carried along by the energy, sound, and movement of the group.  The group supports the children’s individual responses at whatever level of success is possible, while also inspiring their attempts to reach that next developmental level.

(“The Village: A School Where Music Enhances Literacy” by Linda K. Robinson, Jessamine Early learning Village, Wilmore, KY, USA)

Martha Hallquist, Editor of Early Childhood Connections writes in the same issue:

Music Education Promotes Readiness

In a report from researchers at the FPG Child Development Institute in Chapel Hill, NC, Yazejian and Peisner-Feinberg (2002) state:

Music and movement experiences are often viewed as secondary to activities and materials linked more directly with the development of language and cognitive skills – skills associated with conventional definitions of school readiness.  Recent research, however, suggests that music and movement experiences can promote these broader developmental competencies as well.

Research is now establishing the link between music education and school readiness, defined by the National Education Goals opanel across the following developmental domains:

1. Physical Well-Being and Motor Development

As some of childhood’s most active learning, music and movement activities promote fine motor skills as found in finger games, large motor skills as in dancing and marching to music, as well as the sensorimotor, eye-hand coordination skills required in playing small instruments.

2. Social-Emotional Development

In an article about a highly successful early childhood public school in Kentucky, Linda Robinson (2002) writes, “Interacting with other children comes naturally in the course of singing and moving together … for children who have difficulty initiating an interaction with another child, music experiences provide the motivation and context for practice of this skill.”

3. Approaches Toward Learning

Robinson further states, “Children find music and movement to be a joyful, playful, and efficient way to learn.  It should come as no surprise ten that music and movement have been instrumental in creating an environment whereby that joy in learning might be generalized to all learning.”  Robinson’s school principal, Kelly Sampson, adds, “First and foremost we want to facilitate a love for music and movement and ultimately a love for learning.”

4. Language Development

Commenting on her school’s dramatic improvement in reading scores, Robinson says, “We have found that music activities which emphasize song texts, rhyming words, rhythmic patterns, steady beat, and dramatization of stories through movement and instruments have had a very positive effect on our students’ literacy skills.”

      5. Cognitive and General Knowledge

In explaining how concepts can be better understood through music, Robinson writes, “Children seem able to grasp these abstract concepts more easily when set in a musical context that engages their bodies with concrete objects.  Children enjoy making and moving to music and are delighted to repeat the experience as many times as needed for comprehension.”  She concludes, “Music and movement have proven to be an ideal vehicle for children to experience the joys of learning, to learn how to listen and focus their attention, and to employ their naturally imitative abilities for building an understanding of language and concepts skills needed for success in school.”

While there are varying views about why music and movement activities are so pivotal in early education, there is growing consensus that music education affects children’s development across an array of domains.  From the children’s perspective, they are simply having fun and enjoying learning.  From the school administrator’s perspective, music improves test scores and prepares children for school success.  From the musician’s view, early childhood music education increases musical aptitude.  From the parents’ vantage point, children are getting what they need as well as what they want from music education.  And … if music’s good for the children, then it’s good for us all.

Publish this Bulletin in your next school newsletter.

Early Childhood Connections established the tradition of a quarterly Leadership Bulletin, a concise statement about an issue which is of importance to children.  You are invited to photocopy and distribute the following bulletin for educational purposes.

Music is Good for Children

Peanut butter and jelly, socks and shoes, bats and balls, hide and seek, music and children – are all elements of childhood.  Children are naturally interested in music, and music is naturally good for children.  Why is music so attractive to children, and why is music so well suited to children?

• Music is a language, and children are oriented toward learning language.
• Music evokes movement, and children delight in and require movement for their growth.
• Music engages the brain while stimulating neural pathways associated with such higher forms of intelligence as abstract thinking, empathy, and mathematics.
• Music’s melodic and rhythmic patterns provide exercise for the brain and help develop memory.  Who among us learned his ABCs without the ABC song?
• Music is an aural art, and young children are aural learners.  Since ears are fully mature before birth, infants begin learning from the sounds in their environment at and before birth.  Research has demonstrated that newborns recognize their parents’ voices as well as books read to them during pregnancy.
• Music is perfectly designed for training children’s listening skill.  Good listening skills and school achievement go hand-in-hand.
• Music activities are developmentally appropriate because they involve all of the child – the child’s desire for language, the body’s urge to move, the brain’s attraction to patterns, the ear’s lead in initiating communication, the voice’s response to sounds, as well as the eye-hand coordination associated with playing musical instruments.
• Music is a creative experience which involves expression of feelings.  Children often do not have the words to express themselves and need positive ways to release their emotions.
• Music transmits culture and is an avenue by which beloved songs and instruction can be passed down from one generation to the next.
• Music is a social activity which involves family and community participation.  Children love to dance and sing at home, at school, and at church.

Best of all, music is fun!  It is enjoyed by babies, toddlers, children, teenagers, and adults of all ages.  Its benefits can be experienced when alone or in a concert hall with thousands.  And because it is so enjoyable, young children often initiate musical play and experience music’s many developmental benefits again and again.

            When should music be introduced?  Earlier is better.  The research of Edwin e. Gordon has shown that music aptitude stabilizes at age 9 – so, early exposure is imperative.  Just as parents do not wait until elementary school to begin talking to their children, they need not wait to begin singing or playing musical games.  Early Childhood Connections encourages parents to optimize their children’s potential during the accelerated learning years of early childhood by participating in musical activities.  We encourage parents to sing, rock, bounce, pat, clap, dance, and play with their children as they listen to and make beautiful music together.  Parents can share quality music with their children and can set a good example by supporting their local music organizations and by attending concerts given by those in the community.  Support the arts.  Seek out developmentally appropriate musical activities and make music part of children’s lives from birth.  Make music part of life, and reap the rewards as children grow and develop!  For more information about the benefits of early childhood music and movement education, contact:

            The Foundation for Music-Based Learning

            PO Box 4274, Greensboro, NC          27404-4274 

Author:

Lorna Lutz Heyge was educated at the Eastman School of Music (B.M.), Northwestern University (M.M.), the University of Cologne (Ph.D.) and the Cologne Musikhochschule (Artist’s Diploma in Organ Performance).  Active in the early childhood music profession since 1971, she has published pedagogical materials in the United States and Germany (Schott Publishers), as well as in cooperation with native authors in several European and Asian countries. 

Lorna Heyge is founder of Kindermusik, (1974) and Musikgarten (1993).  A frequent speaker at national conferences, Dr. Heyge has recently presented at the Music Educators National Conference, the National Suzuki Conference, the National Head Start Conference, the National Conference for Keyboard Pedagogy, all in the US, and recently at the National Conference of Music Educators in Germany.  Internationally she trains teachers in Europe and Asia and spoke at the World Association of Early Childhood Educators in Madrid in 1998.  Most recently Lorna Heyge led a conference for teacher educators with representative from the United States, Canada, Korea and Malaysia, and trained teachers in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Throughout her career Lorna Heyge has also worked on curricula and training to include music in the early childhood classroom.  From 1981 to 1990 she developed curricula and teacher training materials for the Toronto Montessori School and Teacher Training Institute in Canada.  From 1992 to the present, she has worked in various low-income child development programs in North Carolina.  Recently Lorna Heyge developed program for and supervised a research project to measure the effectiveness of music and movement in preparing young children for school, working with the Frank Porter Graham Institute, University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill. 

Dr. Heyge is author of the Music and Movement Series, early childhood curricula for children from birth to age 8, published by Musikgarten (www. Musikgarten.org).  She can be contacted at lheyge@aol.com.