Your child needs more than exposure to music. Your child needs participation in music! He/she thrives on emotionally engaging music activities which integrate sight, sound, touch, and movement. Through these joyful music experiences your child is learning to love music for all of her life, plus a whole lot more!
Multisensory Activities
Activities that incorporate learning through several senses are known as multisensory activities. In the Kindermusik classroom, every activity is a multisensory activity because we know that:
- Children learn through their senses. Each sense activates specific neurons in the brain; therefore, multi-sensory activities generally provide more lasting learning opportunities than single-sensory activities.
- Each child is unique and brings to class his or her own learning style which determines how he or she understands and organizes information. Read here for more information about three main learning styles and a description of how children with these learning styles may behave in the classroom:
Our best advice? Think of your child as a string. If you push it, it bunches up. If you guide it along, it moves beautifully. So joyfully accept your child as he is, and work with him to make the most of his abilities as they relate to his learning style. We think it is worth restating the following quote this week in the context of our multi-sensory focus.
“Short-term memory has the ability to hold about seven bits of information. But when patterns and related groupings of information are bound together as a unit (as in our multisensory play) the volume of material stored increases. “
- Rhythms of Learning by Chris Brewer and Don G. Campbell
Multisensory Learning
At Kindermusik, we support the wonder and uniqueness of each child, and we’re really proud of the way that the Kindermusik curricula embrace all learning styles by providing multisensory activities to appeal to as many of your child’s senses as possible. But we also recognize that it us up to the teacher and the parent to identify – and celebrate – the wonderful variety of learning styles that are in each class!
Compiled by Theresa Case, whose Kindermusik program at Piano Central Studios in Greenville, SC, is proudly among the top 1% of Kindermusik programs worldwide.
