Like most 2 1/2 year olds, my daughter loves to listen to music. She can go into her room, put in a CD, then after pounding on the buttons for awhile, she will finally get lucky and hit the play button. After the music starts, she will crank up the volume to a level that a teenager would appreciate and jam out to the Philadelphia Chickens or Toddler Favorites, sometimes even Baby's First Beethoven. It cracks me up when I find her in her room sitting in front of the CD player, just singing along to the music. Then, the other day I noticed that not only does she know many of the words to tons of different songs, but she actually knows the order of the playlist. For example, when The Marching Dinosaurs ends, she know that Tomorrow is coming up next--even if they are track numbers 12 and 13. This is something I don't even know and believe me I'm also listening to these CDs right along with her every single day.
This got me thinking about how kids brains are little sponges and how music is such a fantastic way for them to learn. As you know if you've read my blog, Madeline is in a Dual Immersion preschool program, where they speak English half the day and Japanese half the day. She has been in this school for about 5 months now and, honestly, so far I have barely heard her speak a word of Japanese untl the other day she came home singing a Japanese song from beginning to end. I couldn't understand a word, but that didn't stop her from belting it out over and over again.
I feel like after kids get out of the very young years of schooling, music is no longer integrated into the regular curriculum. Some schools may still have music class where kids learn to sing traditional American and holiday songs. But, I don't believe most teachers actually use music in the classroom to assist with learning and memorization after about Kindergarten. Especially in language classes, it seems like such a useful tool to help students memorize phrases and help with pronounciation. In addition, for schools that don't have the resources to have separate music classes, integrating it into the regular curriculum allows these children to still be exposed to music.
I see how much freedom and joy Madeline and her friends get from listening to (and dancing to) music, and I believe that this reaction is a really a human reflex. We should take advantage of this reflex as a way to help our children of any age learn.
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