It's almost instinctual for parents and caregivers to read books to children. From birth to beginning reading, children listen to hundreds and thousands of books being read to them. Favorites are read over and over until the covers fall off and a new favorite is found. Nursery rhymes and fairytales treasured for centuries are read, as are stories newly penned. Silly books, books about other cultures, books about nature, family, nighttime, holidays, food and emotions are all explored. We know that children need to be read to before they want to learn to read themselves. And we know that the desire children have to learn to read is largely based on the enjoyment of being read to. The same concepts apply to listening, enjoying and learning about music.
Sometimes we forget that the process of preparing children to play an instrument (listen, enjoy, and learn) is the same as the process of preparing children to learn to read (listen, enjoy and learn) and can easily be taught by you, the parent. You should feel just as confident selecting music for your child to listen to as you do when you walk into the book store or library and find books to read to your child.
When you read to your child, you adjust the material to their level, and when you listen to music with your child, you can do the same thing. When you read a book, you point out both the new elements ("Look at the tiger in this picture! Have you ever touched a tiger? No, not yet!") and those that you've experienced before. ("Look at the slide in this picture! You go "Woosh!" down the slide at the park.") When you listen to music, you can do the same thing.
Maybe you can't tell your child why Beethoven is a great composer, but you can listen to his symphonies and point out happy, sad, or scary sounds, loud sounds and soft sounds. You can probably even point out some different instruments at times, or at least point out the different sounds of the instrument "families". You can probably tell when it's just the string family playing, and where the brass or percussion instruments enter.
When it comes to teaching music, this blog will give you confidence to teach the things you do know (it's probably more than you think!) and give you step-by-step methods for learning and teaching the new stuff to your children. This shouldn't be a replacement for formal lessons on learning to play instruments, but it should inspire you to teach music to your kids the same way you teach reading- by experiencing it, enjoying it, and trying all different kinds as a part of your everyday life.
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