by Merri Williams
Wondering about how Kindermusik is going to fit into your preschooler’s life this year?
Transitioning to preschool can be made easier by maintaining some school year routines that have brought joy to your child in the past. Re-enrolling in Kindermusik this fall will actually help your child adjust to their new preschool schedule. Knowing they can count on spending time with you and music will add a sense of comfort and security to the new school experience. With life getting busier, and your child’s activities more independent in nature, Kindermusik is one place the two of you can spend time focused on each other. Loving your child is what it’s all about!
This is not only reassuring to your child, but it should also give you some peace of mind as well as to the “rightness” of continuing on with Kindermusik beyond age 3. Two studies actually indicate that not only does early musical training increase intelligence, but also that the amount of parental involvement can greatly affect the amount of improvement.
A study at Sam Houston State University stated that “parental time spent with a child is a more important factor in predicting intelligence test success than such factors as single parent households, poverty, low parental education levels, and ethnic minority status.” Also, “the experimental group children who were active participants in the Kindermusik classes and whose parents helped them with the home musical activities showed significant gains on the areas of the Stanford-Binet subtests that measured abstract reasoning abilities.”
In early 2005, Beth Frook of Little Hands Kindermusik in Clifton, Virginia, shared a granddaddy of a Foundations of Learning (FOLs) in her Kindermusik class. A local university had recently conducted a study on 3-and-5-year old children in her program titled “The Effects of Kindermusik on Behavioral Self-Regulation in Early Childhood.”
It proved what Beth—and many other Kindermusik Educators—already knew:
The longer you stay in Kindermusik, the better.
Specifically, the study showed:
- “Children currently enrolled in Kindermusik showed higher levels of self-control than those never enrolled and those previously enrolled. This suggests that in order for children to reap the benefit of increased self-control as a result of Kindermusik participation, it is important to have repeated and recent Kindermusik experiences and remain enrolled in the program.”
- “Four-year-old children who had been exposed to Kindermusik for longer periods of time are better off in terms of self-control—namely a child’s ability to plan, guide, and control their own behavior—than similar children with less Kindermusik history.”
- “These experiences, stop-go, high-low, fast-slow, short-long, and loud-soft, whereby children’s motor behavior is guided by the music, appear to be good exercise for young children’s emerging self-regulatory skills.”
Below, Beth shares her reaction to the study and the role that research plays in her Kindermusik classes.
Why do you think this research was important for your parents?
I think it adds impetus to a parent’s decision-making because it’s more than just saying, “Okay, we’ve done Kindermusik, let’s try something else.” It encourages a parent to go beyond the smorgasbord approach to children’s activities. A lot of times parents will say, “We’ll do art, then soccer, then swimming.” A study like this encourages families to look at the value of re-enrolling. Repetition is vital for a child’s learning, and currently in our culture, it’s not viewed that way.
Join us as we begin our new fall semester. Imagine That! classes (ages 3.5 – 4) will enjoy learning about “Grasshopper Park” while our Young Child class (ages 5 – 7) will begin exploring and learning the glockenspiel. For class days and times, please visit our Class Schedule.
