The American Music Conference offers these tips to teach your child as you share the simple joy of music.
Embark on a Musical Adventure with Your Preschooler
Even in the earliest years of life, music plays an important role in a child’s development. Music brings families together, stimulates thinking and expressive skills, enhances creativity and a sense of well-being. Active music making has been shown to help children succeed in school and in life.
Why not start sharing music together today?
- Children respond to rhythm and simple music from the day they’re born. You can make music together by making up simple sing-song rhymes and playing gentle patty-cake games. Get creative and have fun!
- Researchers are finding solid evidence that a young child’s ability to perceive and distinguish phonetic sounds is enhanced by engaging in singing and rhythmic movement. They’ve also found that active music-making during the school years can strengthen abstract reasoning skills, paving the way to better results in school.
- Everyone can make music, whether or not we’ve taken a music lesson. Even grown-ups feel great singing along to favorite songs or ‘playing drums’ on pots and pans. Allow yourself to enjoy playing music—and don’t forget to bring the whole family in on the fun.
Active Listening
Active listening can be taught to all children and will support the foundation of your child’s communication skills. Using the Disney’s™ Little Einsteins video, we encourage you to listen with intent and actively engage in the creative and sensory world that surrounds your child.
Music can evoke images and stories through its tempo (speed), melody (tune), rhythm (short and long patterns), dynamics (loudness), and the timbre, or the instruments that are used. Step into the music and travel with the melodies that will become a part of your child’s life.
Musical Activities for Einstein Video:
Talk to your child about the instruments in the video: timpani, string bass, violin, trumpet, and a flute.
Playing and Creating Rhythm Patterns
Spoken words are really rhythms! Use natural rhythm of words and play these on home made instruments, pots and pans or, if you have instruments in the house – then use those (a drum, bell, xylophone, piano or keyboard would work). In the video, the children chanted “spiders and bats, bats and spiders.” Encourage your children to play and clap the words with the video.
Afterwards, use actual or homemade instruments to play these words. As the words are spoken, the children play the syllables on the instrument. Extend this activity to play their names or other words. Have an adult or older sibling clap or play the word as it is spoken, by syllable, and have your child repeat or echo it. This can be a repeated pattern that becomes a chanting or rhythmic pattern. If the whole family is playing on instruments, half can play one word or phrase pattern over and over, as the other half of the family plays a different word or phrase pattern. Layering the word rhythms will create a rhythm ensemble. Listening to and playing word syllables is an important part of reading readiness!
As your child gets older, use poems or familiar nursery rhymes as rhythmic phrases. Speak the words and clap and play the syllables. Play these syllables and words on drums or rhythm sticks, and you’ll have a whole new rhythm ensemble!
Creating Lyrics
Encourage your child to sing with the characters every time Ode to Joy, from Beethoven’s 9th Symphony is sung. Printed below are the notes that can be played on a piano, toy xylophone, or recorder:
[insert 8 measures of melodic line. Notate in concert C. Pitches are:]
e-e-f-g/g-f-e-d/c-c-d-e/e..d-d/
e-e-f-g/g-f-e-d/c-c-d-e/d..c-c/
Create lyrics that fit with the melody by singing or placing a word or a word’s syllable to every note.
Invite your child to add lyrics about the caterpillar in different scenes of the video. Ask them to create lyrics when the caterpillar is flying in the rocket, when he is full or sad. Maybe they could create lyrics that the Musical Tree of Many Colors would sing! You and your child can also create lyrics about what they love to do or who they are. Video or audio record your child and play this back to let he or she be the star!
Questions to ask your child:
“In the video, Quincy loves to play his trumpet. What instrument would you like to play?”
Find pictures of the instrument and teach them how to mime the actions.
“What other animals or insects could pretend to play instruments? What instruments would they use?”
“How does the music make you feel when you hear it?”
“Why do you like music?”
Great Games and Other Activities!
In the video, the terms allegro (quickly) and adagio (slowly) are introduced. These are Italian words that describe the tempo or speed of the music. Use these words with your child, throughout the day, as he or she runs allegro or walks adagio. It’s always nice to walk adagio in the grocery store!
Model the first round. Pretend to be the conductor and have your child and friends stand on the opposite side of the room or open space. Begin conducting and call out a tempo (adagio or allegro). Have your child or children move toward you at the speed that matches the term you called out. When you want them to stop, they must watch you and ‘freeze’ when you ‘cut them off’, or stop their movement, as a conductor would. Begin again and change the tempo term as you would like. At the end you can call out allegro and have them run/jog to you. The first one to touch you can be the conductor for the next round! This is a great way to explore tempo and encourage a working knowledge of the terms!
Other terms for older children: largo = very slowly and broad, andante = a walking tempo, prestissimo = very fast. Children can also conduct dynamics using the word crescendo = gradually getting louder and decrescendo = gradually getting quieter.
Use this same game, but have the children play homemade instruments. They can play very slow or very fast beat patterns, and play louder and quieter. The children can rotate who the conductor will be. You can also play this game with the speaking voice. They can speak allegro or adagio as they crescendo or decrescendo.
Look and Listen Scope!
Invite your child to create their own Look and Listen Scope, just like Rocket, by using their hands. They can pretend to look through a pretend periscope, using two hands in the shape of an ‘o’, over one of their eyes, to see things around their environment and then cup their ears to listen to the surrounding sounds.
Play the Look and Listen game. Describe a sound you hear and have them find the source of it as they walk around the room or area with their hands cupped around their ears. Next, describe something in the room with details about the size, shape, and color, and ask your child to use their pretend periscope to find it in the room. Add details to the description if they can’t find it. Trade roles while you Look and Listen as your child describes the sounds or sights around them. This will build their vocabulary and help them step into their environment. A great activity to play indoors or outside!
Play other Einstein music and have them cup their ears as they listen. Describe the different instrument sounds they hear. This is a great way to build listening skills, which will also help children with communication and language growth.
The Clapper Catcher!
Every child has their very own pair of Clapper Catcher hands, just like Rocket. Every time you listen to an Einstein CD or video, or sing a song, ask your child to use their Clapper Catcher Hands to ‘catch and clap’ the beat! The beat is the study pulse that is felt under the rhythm or melody. Encourage your child to actively listen to all music by clapping to the beat and moving their body! When you are at home, invite them to play the beat on their instruments or found sounds. Let them be in the orchestra!
Sounds are Hiding!
Find different instruments and other found sounds around the house. Place them in a large sack or box so that the children cannot see them. Play the sounds, one at a time and ask the child to tell you what the sound is, what it is made of, or what the object’s name is. This is a great game to build auditory discrimination skills and increase vocabulary! (ideas: a pan, two marbles striking together, a bell, sand blocks, a drum, a small cookie cooling rack, two spoons striking one another, two wooden sticks hit together. )
