The Developmental Benefits of Musical Education for Preschoolers

Most children love to dance and sing, but did you know they can also learn through rhymes, music and movement. Learning music often leads to enhanced language skills. Children with stronger language skills are able to express their needs more clearly at a younger age, which increases your child’s ability to learn more effectively.

Language is not the only benefit of musical education. If children have a successful music experience they can bond emotionally and intellectually with others in a creative learning environment.

Here are some other important skills that are developed through musical education:

1. Cognitive skills: Between one and four years of age, children develop their conceptualization of color, shape, size, and movement, just to mention a few.  Rhymes have been proven to enhance the development of these concepts among children, making them more receptive and active.
2. Verbal skills: When children attempt to recite rhymes, they are trying to express themselves coherently. This helps them become confident speakers and also makes them less self-conscious.
3. Motor skills: The facial expressions, movements, coordination, gestures and balance required to act out a rhyme help child develop their motor skills.
4. Listening skills: When you sing rhymes to your children, you’re essentially telling them a story. To make sense of the story, children have to pay attention to you and the rhyme, thereby making them good listeners – an invaluable trait for later years.
5. Reading skills: Even when children aren’t old enough to read, listening to nursery rhymes can help them become good readers later, by helping them learn the alphabet and recognize words, syllables and corresponding sounds. Want tips on how to make the most of reading, read this blog post.
6. Language skills: Rhymes expose young children to relatively more ‘complex’ words such as spool, eagle, mulberry, thumb, puddle, together, clock, nimble and hundreds more. These are words that are unlikely to feature in their regular vocabulary and so nursery rhymes help them learn new words and proper pronunciation, making them better speakers from a young age.
7. Social skills: When a group of children recite nursery rhymes, they bond better with each other as they realize that they have something in common with other kids. This helps build confidence and social skills. Child care can also help build social skills in preschoolers, here’s how.
8. Memory skills: Repeated exposure to nursery rhymes usually results in children memorizing the rhymes. This acts as an entertaining memory exercise and lays the groundwork for an effective memory for the rest of their lives.

Whether they are singing along to a song, play an instrument or dance to music around the classroom, most children seem to thoroughly enjoy participating in musical activities. The amount of joy you can bring joy to a child each day just by giving them the option to do a little something with music.

Here are some ways to give kids opportunities to be musical:

• Sing or listen to music in the car.
• Put them in piano lessons, dance classes or choir.
• Keep a basket of musical instruments out and easily accessible to children.
• Create a playlist on music streaming services.
• Little Sunshine’s offers Music time for the children to sing and play simple instruments, to move to music, and to create music. Ask your teachers what songs they regularly sing so that you can sing them at home.

Encourage your child to give a performance for your family at home. Create construction paper tickets and get dressed for the occasion, at show time take your seat and get ready for a great show!

If you want to learn more about all of our exciting lesson themes at Little Sunshine’s Playhouse®, contact a location near you today!