First Steps in Music NJ

Quality literature, expressive music, engaging activities 

• If children are to develop a sophisticated spoken vocabulary, they must hear a sophisticated vocabulary.

• If children experience good grammar, enunciation, and expressive speaking they will assimilate those skills.

• If children hear a limited vocabulary, incorrect grammar, and poor enunciation, they likewise will assimilate those language patterns.

• If children are read to in an expressive voice, they will later read aloud and to themselves with appropriate expression.

• If children are to grow into adults that have a thirst for good books, they must be nurtured with exemplary children's

• literature.

• If children are to develop healthy bodies, they must be nurtured with healthy food and exercise.

• If children are to grow to appreciate good music, they must be nurtured with excellent examples of children's music literature sung with sensitive expression.

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One hundred years ago many families instinctively engaged their very young children in activities that were ideal for developing musicality. No one studied early childhood music education, and there was very little need for classes to be offered to infants and toddlers with their parents.

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Today we are discovering that during the past hundred years the musical sensitivities of each generation have been gradually devastated by the side effects of an increasingly sophisticated technological environment. Instead of making music, most only consume it-and the nutritional value of much of that musical consumption has become increasingly empty.

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So what is good literature? 

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• the use of songs and rhymes in which the text relates to the make-believe world of the young child. The words should invite the child into the fantasy of riding a horse or encountering a bunch of pigs.

• Good children's books are full of wonder, are interesting to adults and children, and are still delicious after 30 readings. Good children's songs demonstrate those same qualities.

• If a song loses its appeal after repeated singing, then, like chewing gum losing its flavor, it is not worthy of nurturing a child's musicality.

• The marriage of words and melody in a children's song should embody all the subtleties of natural spoken inflection. 

• During the second phrase of "Frère Jacques" the question is asked, "Dormez vous?" Here, the melody goes up like a natural inflection in the voice when asking a question. This is no accident. It is an example of how in folksongs melody emerges naturally from language. 

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Promoting musical development in infants and toddlers is necessary if the neural pathways are to develop for later musical sensitivities. If we expect audiences in the concert halls in 30 years, then we had better pay attention to the musical nurturing of our infants and toddlers. Songs and rhymes which were traditionally shared 80-plus years ago continue to be a most appropriate means of nurturing musicianship. Today's infants and toddlers could greatly benefit from the natural play and the wonder-full music and rhyme literature that our grandparents intuitively shared with their children. Somehow, they just seemed to know what was right.