Why is music education for young children important?
At the weekend we bought the traditional Indonesian music instrument Angklug at a bamboo market. On Monday every child got one piece of it, representing a certain note. According to the melody we were playing every child had to pay attention to take his turn and when to be silent because others are playing. Of course, it was most fun when all could play loudly together in the end. :)
Early musical education offers a lot of benefits such as social skills, emotional self-regulating abilities, cognitive benefits, and physical benefits. Socially, children learn how to take turns and play with others while still playing individually. Allowing children to play with others, for example their moms as we do it at Joglo Preschool also gives them a boost of self-esteem. Different songs show children the different words used for emotions and body awareness, as well as extending their vocabulary in general. Cognitive benefits also include learning how to count, recognizing sequencing and patterns, phonemic awareness, memorizing different songs and their pace and tone. Physically, children’s gross motoric skills grow by learning how to move their body to music and fine motoric skills by learning how to hold and play an instrument.
