Reasons to Sing With Your Child

  • Music helps your child’s development of language, play and learning.
  • It is fun and it makes new words and ideas easier to remember and understand
  • Music involves many components of language such as speech, non-verbal responses, turn taking as well as actions/gestures
  • Music can introduce children to play and expand play (e.g. Wheels on the bus)
  • Music can be used to help your child during routines and play throughout the day

Music Can Help Develop the Following Language Skills:

  • Learning new words and concepts
  • Imitation
  • Expression of thoughts and feelings (actions, facial expressions and words)
  • Social skills (e.g. turn taking)
  • Rhyming
  • Following and giving directions
  • Non verbal responses
  • Learn experiences and routines

 

Examples of Songs and Possible Language Goals

Song Language Goal
Head and Shoulders Vocabulary (e.g. body parts)
Twinkle Twinkle Concepts (e.g. little, up)
If You’re Happy and You Know it Vocabulary (e.g. clap, stomp)
Wheels on the Bus Nonverbal Response (e.g. gestures/actions)
Hokey Pokey Following Directions (e.g. put your leg in..)
Yankee Doodle Past Tense Verbs (e.g. went, stuck)

 

Strategies to Help Maximize the Benefits of Music

Music with Early Communicators (children who are non-verbal or who are just starting to talk)

  • Stop singing and wait for your child to show you that he wants more singing. He might let you know by: looking at you, bouncing, pulling on your hands, swaying, making noises
  • Sing face to face
  • Make songs part of your daily routine
  • Sing songs with actions (e.g. Eensy Weensy spider)
  • Use hand-over-hand is your child is having difficulty doing the actions

 

Music with Practicing Communicators (children who speak in short phrases)

  • Your chid may try to fill in the actions and the words
  • Pause and let you child take his turn
  • Slow down so your child can truly take her turn
  • Make the important words stand out
  • Repeat
  • Use actions and gestures

 

Music with Experienced Communicators (children who speak in sentences)

  • Your child may sing the song by himself
  • Let him sing the song in his own way
  • Make up new Songs to old tunes
  • Sing songs whose verses can be changed to make up many different rhymes (e.g. There was Shane, Shane dancing in the rain, in the store…)