Exposure to Music is Instrumental to the Brain

Building upon the pioneering work of Dr. Frances Rauscher,psychologist at the University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh,a recent study at the University of Munster in Germany revealed that …practicing the piano in early childhood expands the mind,
literally altering the anatomy of the brain.

In the study, conducted by Drs. Christo Pantev, Larry Roberts and Almut Engelien,
researchers examined images of the auditory brain regions of 20 trained musicians and 13 nonmusicians,all of whom were in their 20’s. The musicians had played instruments for 15 to 21 years and now practiced 10 to 40 hours a week. When piano notes were played to both groups,the response to the piano sounds was 25 percent higher in the musician group. But when the same frequencies were heard as beeps rather than as piano notes, the two groups’ brains looked
the same.

The study also concluded that the younger the musicians were when they began their musical training, the larger their areas of brain activity. The increased response to piano tones was the same in those who played piano, woodwinds or stringed instruments, although most of the musicians said they had received early piano training.According to Dr. Rauscher, musical training, specifically piano instruction appears to dramatically enhance a child’s abstract thinking skills and spatial-temporal ability – skills necessary for mathematics and science – even more than computer instruction does.

The combination of these scientific findings, plus ongoing research into the field, continues to point to one conclusion: music has an obvious impact on the brain and should be supported and encouraged in early childhood education.

Source:
http://www.amc-music.org/musicmaking/brain/munster.htm

Singing and Young Children

Young children certainly aren’t ready for true voice lessons. But that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t sing and you can . And there are ways that parents can help them sing correctly AND do some fun activities that will help them develop good habits and work the muscles to sing well.

• Explore the many types of noises that the mouth and voice can make
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• Encourage them to sing in their upper range (higher notes)
• Play with glissando’s - sounds that start on one pitch and slide around to other pitches. Making high sounds, and sliding to low sounds actually helps children sing in their high head voice
• Hum your favorite tunes. Hum a melody, and have someone guess the song. Humming has two specific benefits according to Jean Westerman Gregg, speech-language pathologist with a specialty in voice therapy. Humming over a period of time increases the strength of the fundamental in the acoustic spectrum, thereby affecting the quality of the singing voice. Also, over an extended period of time, the vibration sensation of humming seems to increase the carrying power of the voice resulting in more volume with less effort.
• Blow with long sustained breaths. Blowing helps to increase breath control. Breath control affects the ability to speak, sing or read a complete sentence or thought. It is dependent upon the strength of the diaphragm and lungs. Blowing can benefit both the speaking and singing voice by increasing that strength. In our Creatures at the Ocean class last week, we long blowing breaths to make the scarf rise with Blow the Wind Southerly.
• Blow into a scarf, or simply blow around a few tissues, or cotton balls.
• Have a contest where two people stand across from each other at a table, with a tissue in the middle, then see who can blow it across the table first when you are both trying to blow it.
• Blow through straws and try to move a ping pong ball in the same type of game.

Here is an overview of the development of a child’s vocal development. After babbling, in which infants often play with "... glissandi and groups of musical pitches and phrases in a repetitive fashion ... words and fragments of song text ... become the focus of attention, followed by certain rhythmic features and,subsequently, the pitch components." The basic learning hierarchy appears to be: "Words-> Rhythm -> Pitch" This develops further: "Pitch Contour -> Individual Phrase Stability-> Overall Key Stability". "By the age of five to six years, young children's singing may have acquired many of the features of the significant adult models."

In Kindermusik, every activity is developmentally appropriate encouraging development in all domains of learning. We sing and explore our voices in lots of different and interesting ways. So many parents have told me that their children really began to communicate after being in Kindermusik. Singing and speaking are very closely related but singing gives your child another way to express themselves and their emotions. Hope to see you soon in class!!!