Importance of Music in Early Childhood Education
Music is everywhere in our daily life and so babies and toddlers are often exposed to this at a very young age. The question is, how does it affect their early childhood development and furthermore impact their life, moving into the future? Music has more of an effect than you may know and most of these have a very positive impact on their development.
- Sensory development: We all know there are 5 senses and through other activities a child starts to develop their sense of touch, sight, smell and taste, but music is a key factor to developing their auditory sense and being able to differentiate sounds and rhythms.
- It is a natural mood lifter: Music tends to lift our mood as adults (well depending on the type of music) but funnily enough it does the same to toddlers and babies. It can be used to lift their mood, but also soothe them to sleep.
- It develops their vocabulary: they start to recognise sounds and variations in tones, as well as different words. As well as this they begin to recognise patterns in the rhythm or structure of words, so they can develop the skill of knowing what kind of sound is coming next.
Music is such a fabulous tool to use to help your child’s development and when combined with dance, it is a fantastic way to build coordination and a sense of rhythm.
