Music Makes a Difference!

I just read this great article about music and how it affects the brain development of children.  It targeted children from 4-6 (that made me smile since it's the recommended age for LPM 1st yr students!), and had some great findings that support music education for small children!  I loved this part:

"That the children studying music for a year improved in musical listening skills more than children not studying music is perhaps not very surprising. On the other hand, it is very interesting that the children taking music lessons improved more over the year on general memory skills that are correlated with non-musical abilities such as literacy, verbal memory, visiospatial processing, mathematics and IQ than did the children not taking lessons. The finding of very rapid maturation of the N250m component to violin sounds in children taking music lessons fits with their large improvement on the memory test. It suggests that musical training is having an effect on how the brain gets wired for general cognitive functioning related to memory and attention

Happy Reading!

First Evidence That Musical Training Affects Brain Development In Young Children

LPM in Utah County

Word is getting out!  People are discovering what a great way this is to teach music to young children!  Click here for the great article in the Daily Herald about how

Let's Play Music is taking off in Utah County!

I love teaching these classes!  It's even more exciting to have two of my own girls in my classes!  I love hearing them singing the songs in their pretend play...and teaching their babies and Barbie's what a sol-sol-do sounds like...or how a red balloon goes up, up, up,up, up, up, up, up!

AND hearing my two year old sing songs from the CD is so cute!

Children and Music

As I prepare for fall classes, I've read so many great things about the benefits of teaching music to children!  It's so amazing that these kids come pre-wired for greatness, but it's up to us, their parents and caregivers to provide an optimal environment for them to flourish!

This article is awesome!  Talking about the child's brain and how it develops.  http://www.newsweek.com/1996/02/18/your-child-s-brain.html

This excerpt talk about music specifically:

"At UC Irvine, Gordon Shaw suspected that all higher-order thinking is characterized by similar patterns of neuron firing. ""If you're working with little kids,'' says Shaw, ""you're not going to teach them higher mathematics or chess. But they are interested in and can process music.'' So Shaw and Frances Rauscher gave 19 preschoolers piano or singing lessons. After eight months, the researchers found, the children ""dramatically improved in spatial reasoning,'' compared with children given no music lessons, as shown in their ability to work mazes, draw geometric figures and copy patterns of two-color blocks. The mechanism behind the ""Mozart effect'' remains murky, but Shaw suspects that when children exercise cortical neurons by listening to classical music, they are also strengthening circuits used for mathematics. Music, says the UC team, ""excites the inherent brain patterns and enhances their use in complex reasoning tasks.''

"Last October researchers at the University of Konstanz in Germany reported that exposure to music rewires neural circuits. In the brains of nine string players examined with magnetic resonance imaging, the amount of somatosensory cortex dedicated to the thumb and fifth finger of the left hand -- the fingering digits -- was significantly larger than in nonplayers. How long the players practiced each day did not affect the cortical map. But the age at which they had been introduced to their muse did: the younger the child when she took up an instrument, the more cortex she devoted to playing it.

"Like other circuits formed early in life, the ones for music endure. Wayne State's Chugani played the guitar as a child, then gave it up. A few years ago he started taking piano lessons with his young daughter. She learned easily, but he couldn't get his fingers to follow his wishes. Yet when Chugani recently picked up a guitar, he found to his delight that ""the songs are still there,'' much like the muscle memory for riding a bicycle."