It always brings a smile to my face when I see young children spontaneously burst into a song or dance. A child’s musical development can be broken down into many areas- beat / rhythm / pitch / tonality/ timbre accuity, expressive responses, concept awareness and application, basic form and structural understanding, musical memory, musical literacy and technical proficiency, the latter ones applicable to children above 4.
At Kindermusik, we work with a child’s needs instead of pushing for early instrumental competence. The Kindermusik child, hopefully, will also manifest more TOTAL BODY involvement musically, and responds with his auditory senses more acutely to his environment. He might also be a little more inquisitive and find it a natural thing to explore, musically or otherwise, and not take things told to him as the only way. He is also likely to be using more vocabulary to express himself, and in that manner, show (musical) expressiveness through his speech.
Many parents ask “what signs should I be looking out for in my child?”. I think the first “assessment” would be their musical interest : is he responding to music by singing along, dancing, bouncing or showing joy? Depending on your child’s age, a corresponding musical milestone can be expected. The American Music Educators National Conference (MENC)’s website spells out specific milestones one can reasonably expect from the various ages between infant to kindergarteners : http://www.menc.org/resources/view/the-school-music-program-a-new-vision
My belief is that music radiates benefits into many other areas of intelligence and developments. Every child is musical and ideally, all children should have musical training. If not, they are missing out, just as one would assume language to be an integral part of education. Howard Gardner in his Multiple Intelligence theory, puts Musical Intelligence as one of the 7 originally identified intelligences, on par with linguistic intelligence and mathematical-logical intelligence. Increasingly educators are recognizing the importance that Musical Intelligence contributes to an individual’s overall ability.
Chiat Goh is the Founding Director and Educator Mentor of Kindermusik Asia
