Mary Anderson is a long-time music educator and co-founder of My Music Starts Here.
Utilizing active music making in our classrooms is one of the most powerful tools we have to build connections, foster joyful play, celebrate diversity, and support the brain development of our young students. Current early childhood brain research and neuro-musical research show us exactly what happens in a child’s brain when they actively engage with music and how it supports the development of vital skills that children need to reach their full potential.
So, what is active music making, what does the research tell us, and how can you make this magic happen in your classroom?
Active Music Making is when children engage with developmentally appropriate music. This looks like giving children opportunities to:
- sing together
- move to music
- keep a steady beat
- learn fingerplays, movement songs, and sequence songs
- listen to high-quality music while imagining the stories being told through the music
This is when the fireworks go off in their brains and the real magic happens. Active music making harnesses the full power of music for children and is joyful and playful. This is very different from playing music in the background during another activity or playing music that is not developmentally appropriate for young children. In fact, passive music listening in the classroom or filling a classroom with music that is overstimulating to young children can backfire on us, even when we have the best intentions, because children learn to tune it out. The music becomes background noise or an unpleasant experience for them, so they learn coping mechanisms to either ignore it or block it out. What a missed opportunity!
Early Brain Development
The Montessori sensitive periods of early child development. Image by New Leaf Preschool.
Between the ages of 3 and 7, a child’s brain goes through a sensitive time period of development when it prunes to make room for new information and skills while also presenting a window of opportunity for active music learning.
Music learning at this age does not have to be specific to one instrument, but rather engaging with music through singing, keeping the steady beat, chanting poems, and moving to music. These activities not only lay the foundation for later musical achievement, but also release chemicals in the brain that support connection, empathy, and a general sense of wellbeing.
Further, when young children engage in active music making in these years, almost every single part of their brain lights up, forging new pathways for learning and processing that make future learning easier. Engaging in music helps keep a child’s brain flexible and strong, supporting their creativity and problem solving.
Language Development and Literacy Skills
Singing developmentally appropriate songs together and sharing fingerplays (poems and songs with hand movements – i.e. Itsy Bitsy Spider and Five Little Pumpkins) are incredible ways to connect with your students and build a strong classroom community. But these engaging and fun activities also do some heavy lifting when it comes to speech and language brain development!
They strengthen a child’s syntactic processing, leading to earlier language acquisition and the ability to organize words into a recognizable pattern. They enhance cognitive skills, shape their nervous system, and strengthen their auditory working memory – pieces that all come together to make communication easier. All of this while your students are joyfully playing, being silly, and connecting with you and each other.
One of the most powerful pieces of research demonstrates that children who can identify and keep a steady beat have an easier time with language acquisition and reading fluency. It is also shown that music is a powerful tool in supporting early reading skills with children from historically under-resourced communities. And the great news is that children LOVE to keep the beat to music and it is an easy whole group activity to fit into the school day!
