we play it in the car all the time! The stories and pictures are great, the music is fabulous, all the words are clear… It definitely teaches my kids about music and they’ll learn about the different notes and timings. It would even help them in the future if they started playing a musical instrument. This is more productive than all the other baby music classes where the child gets to do a bit of bashing. A very professional product. Everything fits in so well.”
Based on both listening to the cd myself and watching my daughter I think it provides one way to get accustomed to basic musical concepts in a playful matter.”
My Son really enjoys it and I thought it is a fun introduction to a more technical appreciation of music. As someone who is not a musicologist there are things that parents can learn too with their children.”
Moosicology is pleased to announce the arrival of a new parenting book, The Music Miracle: The Scientific Secret to Unlocking Your Child’s Full Potential. Written by Moosicology Founder Liisa Henriksson-Macaulay, the book brings the science of music from the academic communities to the family households, answering many burning questions, such as: *What makes my child more intelligent? *Why are some children more successful at school than others? *How can I help my baby develop? *How can I temper those temper tantrums? *How can I help my child make the most of their immense potential, when there are so many possible activities, yet so little time?
Click here to buy The Music Miracle today on Amazon.
“Never before have I seen such a comprehensive and in-depth review of the |
Have you heard the news? This week, the Telegraph reported:
“Rising numbers of pupils can “hardly move” at the age of 11 because of a lack of specialist PE teachers in primary schools, it was claimed.
Baroness Campbell said there was a danger that the Olympic legacy may be wasted as schools fail to convert a wave of goodwill towards sport into actual participation.
She warned that primary teachers received little formal training in PE and often lacked the confidence to deliver high-quality lessons in the subject.”
This is precisely the same problem that has been identified when it comes to music education. The majority of the teachers themselves do not have a background in music, so how are they supposed to teach it to our children? They don’t. I know a child who at school has learned to be proficient at recognizing the sound of different instruments, but doesn’t know how to tell major from minor, let alone count beats or read music.
The problem with this is what Lamb and Gregory identified back in 1993: learning to recognize sounds of instruments, timbres, does not boost the brain. Only music training does. Lamb and Gregory’s finding was that the better your child is at recognizing pitches, the better their reading skills are. And by boosting these melodic skills by ear training, their reading skills improve.
But what’s more relevant for today’s topic, music training also boosts motor skills. This belongs in what Howard Gardner has called ‘bodily-kinesthetic intelligence’. Back in the 1960s, scientists found that when people train while music plays in the background, they are able to lift significantly more weights and run faster and longer than they did without music. (This explains why the Body Pump class blasts louder dance music than your average nightclub.)
A crucial discovery was made in 1967 by G. L. Beisman who organized an experiment on over 600 children. The children were divided into two groups that were taught motor skills such as kicking, jumping and throwing with an identical amount of repetitions and identical instruction. The only difference was that the other group was taught this with rhythmic music, and the other group didn’t have music on at all. The children who were taught through music ended up learning these crucial motor skills significantly better than the children who were taught without music.
A more recent study from 2004 by Evridiki Zakhopoulou and her research group found that standard PE classes failed to improve the motor skills of children (aged 4-5 in this study) at all, whereas the music and movement groups had improved their motor skills and balance in just two months!
Brain imaging studies now have shown that music training activates the motor regions of the brain. In fact, even listening to rhythmic music activates the motor regions, making babies who listen to music with a beat (such as drums or percussion) spontaneously try and match their movements to music! (Zentner & Eerola, 2010) This is crucial for not only their motor development but their intellectual development, as bad rhythmic motor skills predict future learning difficulties (see, for instance, Waber, Weiler, Bellinger, Marcus, Forbes, Wypij & Wolff, Diminished motor timing control in children referred for diagnosis of learning problems, 2000) whereas good rhythmic motor skills, such as clapping and moving to rhythm, predict higher academic achievement in the years to come (see, for instance, Brodsky & Sulkin, 2011).
Don’t let your child fall behind — let your child shine with moving to music!
 It’s beginning to look a lot like that time of the year again. On the surface, Christmas may hold different meanings to different people, but behind the differences a few undisputed core values emerge: family and the loved ones. Gifts, Christmas cards and joint celebrations all promote love and togetherness. Most of all, Christmas is a time for children: after all, Christmas started from celebrating the birth of a child.
Many of the most popular Christmas carols feature rhythm concepts that are otherwise not as commonly found in Western music. New research shows that there is not a better way to train a small child’s brain than to help them clap along to different rhythm concepts. Here’s just a few key findings of recent research: – the better your child is at handclapping songs before starting school, the more they will succeed academically from the start (2011 study from Ben Gurion University in Israel, click here for link) – whether your child is at school yet or not, once they engage in handclapping training, their memory, handwriting and motor coordination improves (as above, click here for link) – children who learn different rhythm concepts succeed 50% better in maths tests than children who are taught the traditional pen-and-paper way. Learning through music helped improve especially those pupils’ maths skills who were previously low achieving in mathematics (2012 study from San Francisco University, click here for link) You can easily encourage your child to clap along to the 3/4 time signature or dance along to the shuffle beat of popular Christmas music. It’s fun, so your child won’t even realize they’re training for academic success! A win-win for the whole family. Most songs and compositions in the Western tradition, whether classical, popular or jazz, center around the 4/4 beat (ie it’s based on the repeated counting of one-two-three-four). 4/4 beat is the standard beat that most everyone, with or without music training, will have gotten accustomed to just by living in a Western country, whether England, United Stated, Finland or Australia. Music scholars such as Edwin E. Gordon have criticized this one-sided musical diet that is fed to most children. Children simply do not hear enough of alternative time signatures. But Christmas songs make an exception. A wide range of popular Christmas carols have the 3/4 time signature, colloquially known as the ‘waltz beat’, where you count one-two-three, one-two-three… Thus, Christmas with its omnipresent carols are arguably the easiest way to introduce your child to the 3/4 time signature and teach them to clap its beat, if you haven’t done this already. The shuffle beat is also present in many Christmas songs — especially in the tradition of Christmas hit songs in popular music. The shuffle beat is where each individual beat (each one of the countings of ‘one’, two’ three’ in 3/4 time and ‘one’, two’, ‘three’ and ‘four’ in 4/4 time is a beat) divides into three instead of two. Here’s 10 songs to teach your child these two different rhythm concepts. You can start with picking just one song from each list and clapping along with your child. It is that simple!
Five of the most popular Christmas songs in the 3/4 beat: We Wish You a Merry Christmas Silent night O Christmas Tree O Holy Night Happy Christmas (War is Over) by John Lennon and Yoko Ono
Five popular Christmas songs in 4/4 shuffle time (note that this is not the typical 4/4 time but 4/4 shuffle): Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer Frosty the Snowman It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas All I Want For Christmas Is You — recorded by Mariah Carey and others Wonderful Christmastime by Paul McCartney
To ensure your child’s learning success after Christmas, why not let Santa bring them their own Moosicology Package. Moosicology features many songs in both 3/4 time and shuffle time, as well as stories, instructions, colourful pictures and charming characters that help your child grasp all these different rhythm concepts so crucial for making the most of your child’s inherent potential! Let your child shine bright like a Christmas candle! Merry Christmas from the Moosicology family. |
