How to Provide More Music Experiences

How to Provide More Music Experiences

Amelia Bachleda: We’ve just heard from Dr. Zhao that young infants and toddlers aren’t actually getting that much music exposure – and singing exposure – at home, especially that infant-directed music, that really magical mixture. We’d love to hear from you. We’re going to do another poll about how you feel about using music in your work with young children – how often do you incorporate it? We have some options here for you to choose from. Let’s see where you all are at at this moment. I feel like it can really range, right? Maybe if you don’t feel confident in singing, or maybe your kids speak another language, it might feel kind of challenging to figure out how to incorporate music.

Marie Baeta: Absolutely. Yeah, it can be tricky. If you don’t feel comfortable, or you’re not quite sure how to fit it into the day, or what tool you might use to even play the music, there’s some different things here that may affect how you incorporate music.

Amelia: Absolutely. OK, let’s see where people are at. 

Wow, that’s more than I thought. 79 percent says you’re always singing. You’re on the right track. Some folks say, “I use music sometimes.” Fewer people said, “I would more often, but I don’t feel that comfortable.” A small percentage says, “Rarely.” We hope that – in the second half of our presentation we’re really going to dive into our strategies. We hope that it can help everyone, no matter if you feel very comfortable or you don’t feel comfortable at all.

All this information might feel a little bit overwhelming, especially if you don’t feel confident in your musical ability. But we assure you that babies don’t actually care about the quality of your singing, but it’s really that magical combination we talked about, right: the lengthening of vowels, the facial expressions, using hand movements, moving together, really paying attention to that baby’s cues. And you can use songs that you already know and enjoy, and sometimes it’s fun – you sing a simple melody like “Time to put on your shoes! Time to put on your shoes!” You can really make up anything with just a few little notes and a little bit of creativity. You can even change the words to some songs that you know, as well. “The shoes on your feet, we lace them up, we lace them up.” So you can be really creative about how we use music to really match what the child is needing in that moment.

Marie: Yeah, absolutely. I’m seeing some good things in the chat too, of folks saying they do exactly that, making up songs to match what the child is doing, and also thinking about incorporating music during all of these different times during the day.

If you’re feeling anxious, practice is helpful too. Right, you have to start somewhere. Start singing by yourself, in the car, that’s a classic one. With a friend, or a young child. Singing along to music is always a fun way to do it. But remember it’s that sort of adapting the music to the infant that is the most impactful. You can work with colleagues to help you learn new songs, and about what strategies and songs work well for them, how you might think about doing it for yourself.

Of course, we heard from Christina that babies are maybe not hearing as much music at home. It’s important to discuss with families what songs they’re singing to their children, what they might play at home, and how you can maybe bring some of that music from home, or music perhaps that they’d like to play but haven’t found a way to do that – you can really help support that, getting some of those important musical experiences, some of those cultural experiences, into your learning environment.

You can also think about suggesting some songs or model singing with children during home visits or group socializations to help parents build up that repertoire of songs. This is a great conversation to have, thinking about what songs to sing with parents while you are co-planning activities for home visits or group socializations, to be able to incorporate music and songs into your learning environments.

Also, in your viewer’s guide, we’ve included some song suggestions that many of you submitted from the registration page. So please go there for some great new song inspiration. If you have any other songs that you love, please add them to the chat, we all learn best from each other.