When infants experience a rhythmic pattern in music, it improves their ability to make predictions about rhythmic patterns in speech!
A) Rhythmic Patterns
The timing of syllables helps infants define one speech sound from another and understand what someone is saying.
FUN FACT! It's the ability to identify differences in speech sounds that helps infants learn to speak
B) Babies Recognize Patterns
Infants experience a complex world OF sounds, lights & sensations. Therefore, the baby's job is to recognise the pattern of activity that is presented to them.
FUN FACT! Pattern perception is an important cognitive skill. improving that skill early may have long-lasting effects on an infant's learning.
Music helps with brain development! Exposing your baby to basic music activities help your baby learn the language faster.
A) How Music Helps
Babies tune into the voices of their parents and start to produce a wide variety of sounds 'oos, ahhs, shrieks, yells' that follows the cadence & patterns of speech similar to music
B) Exposure To Music
Introducing your baby to musical concepts, whether:
- Singing
- Letting him pound a drum
Will develop the same areas of the brain that are needed to master a language.
Want to learn how your baby might respond to music?
Music,
A) Helps in an infant's brain development
B) Improves an infant's brain responses to music and speech, therefore, helping them in learning a language
How infants might respond to music! (Look out for these signs):
A) Physical Movements
Wriggle their bodies
Wave hands
Kick their feet
B) Freeze & Focus
Their eyes may brighten or change focus & towards the sound source. Usually babies will freeze & focus during a song
C) Oral Response
Your baby may coo or vocalise, or even just make rhythmic tongue movements.
This is the beginning of singing!
D) Smiles & Giggles!
Your baby may smile or even giggle when you sing a particular song. Notice which songs make your child light up most!
E) Babbles
In a musical environment, babies are likely to babble as a way to communicate musically. If you hear increased vocal play in response to music, assume it’s music play. Babble back!
Here's how you can incorporate musical plays & games in your infant's activities!
There are various types of musical plays YOU can incorporate in your daily activities with your baby!
A) Shake Shake!
Put a small amount of dried rice, beans, sand, or pebbles in empty plastic bottles. Let the infants explore the different sounds made by the shakers!
B) Sing when you’re counting anything & everything!
Use a rhyme like “Five little monkeys jumping on the bed.” When you’re counting, use your five fingers to show the five monkeys. Hide a finger each time a monkey falls off the bed.
C) Sounds of Music
Let children explore the different instruments & sounds!
D) World Music & Genre Exposure
It is worth exposing your baby to all kinds of genres and styles of music as this would help build your child's sense of acceptance in the community and be more culturally sensitive in not only your community but in other cultures' community as well. Mix in music from other cultures and sing/play along with the music!
E) Reading
Make reading musical! Research shows that singing while reading a story helps the child in two types of languages: Expressive and Receptive. Receptive refers to language skills whereas Expressive refers to expression and emotions. Such development can help your child build up cognitive and emotion development holistically. Books like "We Are Going on a Bear Hunt" has expressive words that can help the child to reinforce narrative skills and help build new vocabulary words through sounds. Infants especially will love to hear you sing while reading a story book because it can help hear better. If you are worried that you will sing off-tune, purchase some sing-along books or even look out for YouTube videos that has an example of how to sing along with a book.