Music Education Blog

music education blog

If you’ve ever ended a hard day at work by blasting heavy metal through your car windows or flopped onto the couch by the fireside with a glass of wine to unwind while listening to some soothing tunes, you don’t need statistics to tell you how relaxing music can be. Maybe you didn’t realize it, but your kids can also get the same comfort you do from a little musical recess – minus the fireside and the wine, of course!

That’s why we started Kidzter, a new website dedicated to helping kids and families share the love of music. Why make music a part of your child’s life? Playing music with other kids is not about your child becoming a star or prodigy, but about learning such fundamental things as teamwork, organization, and responsibility, while stimulating creativity, self-esteem and feelings of accomplishment. Listening to and participating regularly in music has more benefits than you might think! Kids who are actively involved in music:

• Do better in reading and math when they start school
• Are better able to focus and control their bodies
• Play better with others and have higher self-esteem
• Have less stress

In fact, a study published in February of 2005 showed that playing a musical instrument can actually reverse existing stress! By actively participating in music, kids can experience a calming effect more powerful than with reading or TV. Unlike watching TV, music is more than just a momentary distraction; it actually helps your child’s brain develop! Providing a “rich sensory environment” for children to actively participate in music and song forges more pathways between the cells in a growing child’s brain. Goodbye SpongeBob, hello xylophone!

One of the best ways to do this is through Musical Play Groups, where kids get together to make music. Whether they are toddlers, pre-schoolers or older children, everybody can have a good time making music together! Ready to start getting with the musical program?

Check out www.kidzter.com to find out more about our music teacher database and our tools and tips for finding and starting Musical Play Groups. Looking for idea closer to home? Try these other idea for ways to stimulate your children’s love of music:

• Sing With Your Child – It’s fun and it doesn’t matter if you can’t carry a tune. A little off-key harmony will only make the experience more memorable.
• Make Music With Ordinary Household Stuff – What is there around your house that you can transform into a musical instrument? If you are creative you can make music with almost anything.
• Start Early Music Lessons – Children as young as 4 are able to learn how to play an instrument. At Kidzter.com, we have one of the most extensive searchable databases of local music teachers.

Music Education for Elementary-aged Kids

You hear it on the news at night. Thousands of teachers to be laid off. Your son is sitting in the room with you and asks what is going to happen to his music teacher. What do you tell him?

Budget cutbacks are forcing the schools to cut back on programs like music and physical education. In recent years the research on the importance of music education has accelerated, even as the schools are forced to decide that music classes must go.

Here are some of the ways that music education helps children today and into the future.

Math skills are developed through music. At an early age music helps our children’s brains develop in such a way that later they have a better ability to understand math. With math as the main part of technology, we must be able to focus on math so we can use it to further the positive elements of our economy. If we don’t teach the kids music, we may be keeping them from learning an essential element needed to compete with other countries.

Reading skills require a mind that can concentrate. Music classes teach children how to concentrate. With this skill come enhanced memory and recall skills. The illiteracy rate is going up in the United States. We need to enhance reading skills and music education is a good method to help.

Science skills also benefit from music skills. Music education enhances our children’s reasoning abilities. Through these they can understand how science works, which will make our county competitive down the line.

Social skills seem to be on the decline as children text instead of talk to one another. They play solitary games and spend endless hours alone in front of their computers. Music allows the children to work in teams to create music as a community. When your child is in a music class, he learns how to cooperate with others for a common goal. Music class helps the solitary child associate with others and belong to a group. It helps enhance self-esteem and also may be a step in reducing the incidence of violence in the schools by bringing different groups of kids together.

Music classes have also been associated with an increase in IQ. Music education has helped children with breathing and speech difficulties and those with learning disabilities. Who know what else music helps? By removing music from the schools, we are robbing our children of the necessary proficiency for their and our future. I don’t need to remind you that our children will be running things in a few years. Do you trust your future to someone with an inadequate education? Music education is essential. Be aware if your school is planning to drop the subject.

If you don’t share this opinion, that’s OK, but please try to understand our side in this debate.

What can you do? If you find that your school system in considering dropping music classes, be assertive. Do your best to stop the school from doing this. If you fail? Then try to get the classes reinstated. And in the mean time, if you have children who would have benefited from school music education, consider enrolling them in private classes. One or two lesson a week are enough to get many of the benefits of music classes.

The Importance of Music Education

Schools across the nation are being forced to cut back on teaching personnel, putting children into larger classrooms and dispensing with courses thought to be extracurricular, such as fine arts. Fine arts includes music, band, art, and theater. One large school system in North Texas is looking at having to let over 3000 teaching staff go.

In some school systems homeschooled children have been allowed access to these classes without having to attend the rest of their classes at the school. The reason for this is that while a child can learn about reading, writing and arithmetic with a one-on-one teacher, he cannot learn to play an instrument in an orchestra alone with his mother at the kitchen table.

What is the more potent instrument?

Plato once said that music “is a more potent instrument than any other for education.” Music forms the basis for much of an infant, toddler and preschoolers education. Any parent who has ever watched their child singing and dancing with Dora the Explorer and her friend Diego may only see her adorable baby being cute.

However, there is much more going on. Music is useful in helping exercise the brain for certain higher cognitive functions such as boosting their spatial reasoning intelligence, improving math skills, being better able to work puzzles, and improving their abstract reasoning abilities. Add that to a parent who takes an active part in the singing and dancing and the child’s abilities increase even more.

When should music enjoyment begin?

Early music enjoyment should start before the child is 18 months of age. By that time the listening vocabulary of music should begin to be formed and should definitely have taken place by the time the child is 3 years of age. When the child enters first grade the time for him to have developed his music listening vocabularies has passed. Parents will probably notice the great amount of music played in the child’s preschool, teaching colors, days of the week, months, even beginning mathematics.

But what will happen to these skills if music is cut from the elementary system, where children attend music and art classes on a rotating schedule? Music is not used in these grades as much for learning. By the time the child is in middle, junior and high school, music becomes an elective and is likely to be the first subjects cut.

What does a child get from music programs?

Studies have shown that through participating in school music programs students gain a sense of self-discipline, self-esteem and pride of accomplishment. They also learn to excel in teamwork, problem solving, leadership and creative thinking. It has been found that music/arts students consistently scored higher on both the math and verbal sections of the SAT. These are just some of the reasons why homeschooled children are often placed in school just for band, art and theater.

It has been scientifically proven that music education is important because it stimulates thought and action in other areas besides music. The study of music helps develop an all encompassing discipline of mind that helps in the learning of non-music academic subjects like reading, writing, math, physical coordination and much more.

What can parents do to help if music is dropped from their school system?

So what are parents to do if the school drops fine arts from the curriculum? There is much that can be done in the home, but it is best to begin while the child is still young to that a parent has his willing cooperation. Besides music on television shows, parents can get CDs with nursery rhymes, music games and picture books to sing with the child.

Preschoolers can begin keyboard lessons, dance classes and violin lessons. Older children enjoy piano lessons and solo instrument lessons as well as voice. Parents at the same time can play the classics on the car radio and at home to introduce the children to famous composers. This can be a fun family activity with the children listening to the story of Peter and the Wolf as they learn about the different instruments in the orchestra.

Children old enough to sit and behave can be taken to musical and theatrical events. Art galleries are good as long as the child is old enough to look but not touch.

Parents do not need to leave all education to the schools. Even if a parent doesn’t do a formal homeschool, much learning takes place in the home anyway. Adding some music appreciation and performance to a child’s life at home will help him where ever he goes. No matter the age of the child, music education will assist him whenever a parent takes over the role of music teacher.