Three to five year olds love to engage with music and movement and naturally enjoy singing, dancing, exploring sound sources, listening and being creative. At this age, children also experience many great advances in development. Music education can be extremely beneficial in supporting this development, helping children establish crucial physical and social–emotional skills. It can […]
Category Archives: Music
Music education and play-based learning
Image provided by author, Amy Rothe. Australian early learning settings follow a play-based pedagogy, in line with the emphasis placed on play in the national frameworks. Music is not a core part of this pedagogy, perhaps because of the perception that music education is about rote instruction, practising scales and reading notation—compared to play-based learning, […]
Why introduce music to babies and toddlers?
Music plays an essential part of infant sensory development. Julia Rennick shares various forms of music that might be used with babies and toddlers as a way of fostering relationships. This piece may be helpful for educators when considering the connection between infant and toddler learning, their programs and how music can be used to […]
Music in early learning
Inspired by the comments on my previous post, I wanted to write about the practical ways in which educators can facilitate teaching of music in early learning settings. There is growing evidence about the numerous benefits of teaching children music. In early learning settings, music can be used as a learning tool to facilitate growth […]
Background Music
As a person who has worked in the management side of Early Childhood Care and Education for the past 6 or so years, sometimes it is cathartic to put down the staff roster and the invoices and pick up a baby instead. So today I did just that. The following is a recount of what […]
Jamming with your toddler: how music trumps reading for childhood development
Forget the Mozart Effect and Baby Einstein, take it easy on acquisitions for your two-year-old’s private library, and don’t fret if your three-year-old hasn’t started violin lessons just yet. The key to unlocking a child’s potential intelligence and happiness may indeed lie in music, but succumbing to the commercial juggernaut that is the baby-genius-making industry […]