How to teach your kids the fundamentals of music successfully
It’s safe to say that most parents want their kids to learn music, or at least try it out. But how do you increase the probability of your child succeeding at playing an instrument? This article focuses on how you can give your child a musical advantage before they ever pick up an instrument.
We have all heard that there are advantages to teaching kids music at a young age. I’m sure you’ve heard that if you play classical music for your child it improved their intelligence and learning skills. This is true, but what is the real reason behind that?
When you play classical music for a child what the child’s brain is actually doing is processing all the different instruments, separating them, and subconsciously putting it back together. This all happens within the brain naturally, and this type of early exposure helps with logical processing skills and problem solving while your child is simply listening to classical music. This is why people say to play classical music for young children. With advancements in medical technology, we can now see that the neurotransmitters in the brain are firing and all of this is happening while your child is sitting there listening to music. At the bottom of this article there is a great video explaining this in more detail. I would recommend giving it a watch, it’s short and well explained.
Some other advantages of learning music is the development of executive functioning skills. What are executive functioning skills?
Executive Functioning Skills include logical processing; problem-solving; planning; self-control; time management; attention to detail; flexibility; perseverance; working memory; task initiation and organization to name a few. All things we would love for our kids to acquire as they grow up.
So how are your kids going to learn these skills? Did anyone’s kids ever run before they walked or even walked before they crawled? Did anyone’s kids ever read or write before they talked? Did you give your kid a pen and paper to learn how to speak their native language? No, they listened to their family and people around them to learn how to speak. When developing as a young child you don’t skip any steps. No one walks before they crawl, no one runs before they walk. So, when being introduced to music why do most parents let their kids skip steps?
Traditionally, the first step in a child’s music education is to learn how to “read” music. But if you were following along in the previous paragraph, we all know you cannot run before you can walk, so this method, although traditional, is not ideal to teach kids the fundamentals of music, because it starts with a jog, rather than a crawl.
Music is a language, and needs to be taught like a language. And just like any other language, you need to listen to the language a lot before to learn it. You don’t start by writing or reading. Maybe you can remember your first music lessons? Likely you were sitting at a piano and the first thing given to you is a book, and the first assignment is to learn how to read music. We have found that the odds of this being successful are extremely low, and I’m sure some of you current parents gave up because it was too frustrating and too complicated to learn at a young age.
Through years of teaching kids’ music, we have discovered a better way to teach kids the fundamentals of music in a fun, engaging, and logical process that can be done anywhere, without any instrument, or any music teacher, or music experience. The musical language just like any other language is a processed activity, and that means we need to go through the steps to be successful at learning. And if you have been paying attention, when it comes to languages, that means listening first.
We have created a way to teach kids the fundamentals of music without any papers, pencils or boring instructions and assignments. The curriculum is a collection of custom developed videos that your child (and you) can listen to and start incorporating the musical language into your child’s life. This starts teaching them how to hear the musical language and how to process it. Then as they get older and they build dexterity with their fingers they can start taking on instruments. If you taught them how to listen to music with trained ears and how to process sounds. They will understand how an instrument works before they even touch their instrument of choice. At the end of the day, what we are essentially doing is teaching the crawling portion of learning to walk.
The course that we created is called “We learn music together”. It’s an interactive course that you and your family can do anywhere. You simply sign up and you just hit play. We provide videos that explain all the skills you will be learning, and with audio drills that provide the answer and help you develop and learn the musical language. The cool thing is you don’t need any prior knowledge of music. You just have to have a phone, computer or iPad.
We would love for you to give “We Learn Music Together” a try with your young kid(s), and most of our parents get involved with the lessons because we have made them fun, and family friendly.
Recommended Video to Watch:::: https://youtu.be/R0JKCYZ8hng
Thanks!
The We Learn Music Together Team
