Home » Health & Parenting » Family Support & Service » Parenting Aides & Ideas

Stimulate their whole brain with music

By Lil’ Fi for Families Magazine – Gold Coast

Did you know that music is the only thing that stimulates your entire brain? When children can’t hear you because they are concentrating on something else try singing to them. Music will cross those ‘blockages’ and your life will become an opera.

Musical tuition helps children develop many other life skills, become responsive learners and support attention, focus, regulation and brain integration in a focused, all-encompassing way.  The best part is that it’s fun and easy to do.

Music rewards the brain

Numerous studies have shown that supporting learning with music reaps big rewards for your child’s brain development.

Music Brain Arrangement of human feature lines and symbolic elements on the subject of human mind, consciousness, imagination, science and creativity

 

Incorporating music in their every day life:

  • Helps children learn to listen
  • Benefits language skills
  • Improves literacy and numeracy
  • Aides behaviour
  • Boosts confidence

“But I can’t sing!”

Kids don’t care about tone, they love us and want us to get silly and have some fun with them, so just sing anyway.

Early communication skills are learnt first from our care-givers and then everyone else in our lives. It’s important to sing. Really important.

All of the nursery rhymes you grew up with and know have the keys to speech, literacy, numeracy, annunciation. All those Grandmas can’t be wrong.

The sillier the better

Give yourself permission to shine. Use a plastic microphone or a hairbrush as a microphone and help them learn that music is fun.

Try using a pattern of clapping to really stimulate the brain. There is evidence proving that this method teamed with music is the way to get the best results.

Try using a puppet on your child’s finger or hand and get them to touch their nose, their toes, their knees their head.

The love of music is contagious, show your kids that music is fun and you’ll be setting them up for life.

Visit www.lilfi for more tips and videos.

 

Photo of author

Janine Mergler

Janine Mergler is a veteran Queensland teacher, graduating from QUT with a BEd majoring in Social Sciences. After many years in the classroom, Janine moved on to academia. She has proudly trained new generations of teachers in her role as a lecturer at Queensland University of Technology Faculty of Education. She has also worked in the Queensland Government as an education specialist, developing education resources and delivering community awareness programs to help families conserve water. Currently she is the owner and editor of Families Magazine, a publication specifically targeted at parents who value a quality education for children.  Janine leads a team of professionals who write about family lifestyle, early childhood, schools and education information and family-friendly events.

Leave a comment