<strong>How Music and Movement Promote Development</strong>

Music naturally delights and interests children. An early childhood program that includes time for music and movement provides an outlet for children’s high spirits and creative energy. Music and movement experiences help develop both sides of the brain—an important finding in recent brain research—and contribute to children’s social/emotional, physical, cognitive, and language development.

<strong>Social/emotional development</strong>

Music and movement activities can be shared experiences that make children feel part of a group. Different kinds of music evoke different feelings and actions in children. Lively music can lift children’s spirits and make them want to get up and move their bodies. Quiet, soothing music calms and relaxes children. Children use their bodies to express different kinds of emotions—excitement, anger, sadness. Sharing a song or a dance learned at home helps children to feel good about themselves and their culture. They develop social skills playing musical games requiring simple cooperation such as “Ring Around the Rosy,” or progress to those requiring more complex cooperation such as “Farmer in the Dell.”

<strong>Physical development</strong>

Children work on gross motor development (moving to the music and participating in other movement activities) and explore the many ways their bodies can move (finding different ways to get to the other side of a line without stepping on it). Through movement activities (playing “Follow the Leader”), they can improve large muscle skills, balance, and coordination. They strengthen small muscle skills as they learn fingerplays and play musical instruments.

<strong>Cognitive development</strong>

Children solve problems while engaged in music and movement activities. They use logic and reasoning to figure out how to make a scarf fly like the wind or which instrument can be used to make a sound like thunder. They create patterns with the words they sing or chant, with the motions they make with their bodies, and with musical instruments. Children learn about number concepts as they clap their hands and stomp their feet four times or as they sing number songs. They think symbolically when they pretend to walk like an elephant or