Survey Reveals Most Parents Are Misinformed About Inborn Music Ability
According to a recent Harris Poll, nearly three-quarters of parents (72%) believe you are born either with or without the ability to carry a tune. At Music Together, we know that this is not the case! Just as we are all born with the potential to learn language, we are also all born with enough music ability to learn to sing in tune and move in time---as long as we have an adequate music environment throughout early childhood. (You are providing this to your children through Music Together!) Want to learn more? Visit our website to read about the survey and our response to the results.
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What's New on the Family Music Zone ™Have you visited the Family Music Zone yet? On our new website just for enrolled families, you'll find MP3s of the Bongos songs to stream or download, bonus song activity ideas, videos to watch, music development resources, and more. We've also just posted an online version of the Bongos songbook so you can easily flip through it from you computer, phone, or tablet. Check out the Family Music Zone today!
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We Want Your Feedback: Take Our Survey and Enter to Win
Please take this brief (5-10-minute) survey about the changes to your Music Together home materials and the Family Music Zone, and enter to win 1 of 10 Singalong Storybook gift sets. We thank you very much for your feedback!
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Supporting Executive Function through Music-Making
by Frances Durkin, M.Ed., MBA, Certified Music Together Teacher
At Music Together, we say "music learning supports all learning®." While our primary goal is to support children's music development, we know that music activities also foster children's growth in other domains essential to school and life success. Might music play a role in helping children who are homeless get ready for kindergarten by improving their executive function skills? Three years ago, a research team at the University of Minnesota, where I work as an early childhood specialist, launched a study to find out.
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Go on a Bongos Scavenger Hunt!
Get out your Bongos songbook and recording and find the answers to the following questions. Then, enter to win some instruments so you can continue the music-making fun with your family!
- How many pictures of suns are there in the Bongos songbook?
- Can you find the bunny slippers? (Hint: They're in the same song illustration as the miniature Bongos songbook!)
- In the songbook illustration for "Down Under," what is the name of the instrument the kangaroo is playing?
- What is a rik? (Hint: It can be heard during the song "Ding-a-Ding.")
- Listen carefully! Name one of the songs where you can hear wind chimes.
Bonus: There is one picture of a planet in the Bongos songbook. Can you find it?
 Want to win a Drum 'n' Fun Percussion Gift Set?
Enter your answers to the scavenger hunt into our Rafflecopter giveaway. We will choose and announce the winning family around November 15, 2014.
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The Okupsi Family, Princeton NJ
In 1998, Laura Okupski enrolled in Music Together in Princeton, New Jersey, with her first child Emily. She never imagined that the classes would put her family on a path towards becoming lifelong music-makers. And yet, sixteen years later, Laura and her family---which has now grown to include seven children---are still making music together.
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As we learned in the article From Our Experts, executive functions are cognitive skills that allow children to organize their thinking and behavior, solve problems, figure things out, and achieve goals. These are important life skills, which are much more easily developed in early childhood than later on. While having fun in Music Together class, your child will also be developing someimportant executive function skills:
- Working memory, the ability to hold relevant information in mind in order to connect multiple pieces of information, can be developed by learning songs with lots of words or with "project songs" that are developed over time.
- Attention control, the ability to both sustain and switch one's attention in order to achieve a goal, is supported when children have to pay attention during a song in order to repeat its pattern or follow teacher's or fellow student's actions.
- Cognitive flexibility, in part, the ability to transfer knowledge to a different setting, is supported simply by singing the same song in different settings (e.g., at home and at school), at different times of the day, or by singing a verse in another language and then in English.
- Inhibitory control, the ability to resist the urge to do something inappropriate, can be strengthened by learning to: change tempos, sing two songs with different energy levels back-to-back, or "audiate" part of a song (i.e., "hear" part of the song word in their heads but not sing it out loud).
Although research on the connections between music-making and executive function development is still new, one study found that, among a group of children ages 4-6, those who received music training in areas such as rhythm and melody for two hours a day for just four weeks exhibited improved executive function skills, including self-control, attention, and memory.
To learn more about executive function, check out these great resources:
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Hey, Diddle, Diddle Singalong Storybook Coming in November
"Hey, Diddle, Diddle," let's head to the theatre and see if the cow can really jump over the moon. She has admirable persistence---and a lot of help from some very colorful friends!
The hardcover version of our new Singalong Storybook, based on the song "Hey, Diddle, Diddle" from the Bongos Song Collection, will make its debut November 11 on the Music Together online store. The board book will arrive sometime in December. Give us your email address and we'll let you know when they're available.
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© 2014 Music Together LLC. Princeton NJ, USA. All rights reserved.
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