Looking for ways to spend quality time with your child? Do some music with them!

Outside of the classroom, parents can play a big role in developing the child’s musicality and other skills through music. Music stimulates a child’s frontal lobes of the brain, which is important to both language development and motor development. It is a fun and engaging way that develops multiple motor skills in one session such as gross and fine motor skills through movement and using instruments, literacy skills through singing and memorizing songs, and socio-emotional skills through working as a team. Here are a few suggestions on how to incorporate more music in our daily lives. 

Appreciation through listening 

In our increasingly globalized society, recognizing and learning to appreciate music from all around the world is important. This helps to build your child’s musical repertoire and allows them to notice universal patterns in music. Here are some suggestions.

Listen to music together

You can do this at home, in the car, or even playing music during mealtimes.  It is amazing how applications like spotify and itunes make music more accessible than ever. You can start with your favourite songs and then change up the genre and type of music every now and then. I like to build up my playlists by shazaming songs that catch my interest when I am on the go.

Take your child to child-friendly concerts

These are great opportunities for children to have a firsthand experience to understand how sounds come together in music that they hear on speakers and on radio.

Interaction through songs

Throw in a song or two everyday! Songs have the potential to help your child to build literacy skills, such as developing a larger vocabulary and strengthen memory skills. Everything made into a song helps us remember information better. Here are some things you can keep in mind when you do this.

Sing to your child

This enhances parent-child bond as you will incorporate eye-contact, smiling, moving together and touch in the process

Repeat the song

Repetition helps your child remember the words and in the long run respond to songs more confidently and effectively

Sing songs your child can relate to

Incorporating developmentally appropriate songs allows children to memorize the song in its perfection. Take the effort to find out what your child has been singing in school and do the same at home. It can be a great opportunity to bond and develop numeracy and literacy.

Creativity through encouraging confidence

Creativity is the highest form of intelligence, and some argue that musical composition is the epitome of creativity. All children are innately gifted at improvising. We see them make up their own tunes in languages we often don’t understand, or filling in lyrics to songs with their own words. Our confidence when interacting with them encourages this creativity. Here are some ways that encourage children, and even yourself!  

When we join in a song, we sing with our heart

When we play an instrument, we play it fearlessly

When we dance to music, we get our children to join us

When our child starts creating gibberish tunes, enter their world and reply them with our own version of tunes too

These little actions contribute to a world where children can look up and see people not afraid to express themselves and help them to believe that they can continue to do the same too. 

Hope this helps! Till next time :)

With love,
Xuemin