Benefits of Music and Movement To Children

What happens to the child’s brain when listening to music? Don’t you know that each component of music affects different parts of the brain? If you remember it right, during pregnancy you were asked to speak or let your baby listen to music when he was still a fetus in your womb. At 5 months, the fetus could already respond to music by moving to the beat. This suggests that any prenatal exposure to music facilitates fetus development. When multiple intelligence becomes functional to a child during its development stage outside the womb, the single most important, effective tool any mother can use is music. Any child could easily connect to music.

A study reported that a child is able to develop its language and speaking ability a whole lot faster through music and I can attest to that. Little D.C. was exposed to classical music everyday and every night with no fail ever since I found out that I was pregnant. He came out 8 lbs, with clear skin (not wrinkled) and with one tooth. I was shocked at 1 year old, he was able to sing the chorus of Somewhere Over the Rainbow in tune and could speak straight with about 40 words. At nearly 24 months he can talk to everybody in paragraphs already. Now 3, oh goodness, he has a very strong memory and you can talk to him both in Filipino and English like a 5 year old kid. Yes, he became bilingual, though not very good in Filipino yet but he can go to a fastfood counter, order a meal in tagalog and pay for it.

Verbal intelligence and comprehension skills are his strongest area. He’s both a listener and a talker. He learned new words at a very rapid pace, could understand complicated questions or instructions and did not go through the babble stage. I did not teach him anything formal. But, we listen to classical music together, I sing to him, dance with him, play instruments with him and eventually enrolled him in one of the recognized music and movement program in the world for two semesters.  I strongly believe that music supported that development.  Music is one teaching style any mom should acknowledge that could best enhance the learning aptitude of a child. It is a live the experience, enjoy the learning process, and obtain positive outcomes kind of child development tool.

Movement

The music’s natural partner is movement. This nonverbal response could make the child dance and move all muscles of the body, which is centered on the vestibular system development. Experts highlight the importance of movement in the beginning years to prepare the brain ready for learning. How do you think music, without much effort, could stimulate the best dance movement? Though dancing is not little D.C.’s strongest, he loves it!