How music can boost children’s development

Music is a great learning tool for children, especially from a young age. Many people forget that listening to music can begin in the womb, playing music to babies who are not yet born can help them later on in life.

Being around music is important for children as this can help many areas of their development. At nursery singing songs and listening to music should be part of the every day routine. Music can be used for many different purposes such as calming and soothing children or playing lively up beat music to allow them to freely move and express themselves.

How music is used is important and this should be communicated with parents as they can continue this path of learning at home.

Providing children with these learning opportunities will help them develop not only their language development but also their creativity, physical skills and their personal and social development. You could almost say that music helps all areas of children’s development.

As children hear music from an early age it helps them learn sounds and the meanings of words. Moving to music helps develop those gross and fine motor skills and music can strengthen children’s memory skills.

Knowing all this information it is important that early years practitioners incorporate music into the nursery day. There are many ways in which this can be done, having set times throughout the day for singing is a good starting point and them maybe look at other opportunities.

A few suggestions of ways to incorporate music into the learning environment

• Include musical instruments in your home corner with music playing in the background
• Make musical instrument with the children
• Start the morning with a specific piece of music
• Have set times in the day for singing songs
• Musical books in the book corner
• Use calm soothing music during sleep time
• Use music to bring a story alive

Watch this video to see how music can benefit children’s development