Music Kids is more than fun!

Abundant research shows that the first five years of life are crucial in a child's development. In fact, fifty percent of brain capacity is built during these years and stimulation appears to have an important influence on this. Nobel prize winning research by doctors David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel of the Harvard Medical School found that if a kitten or monkey was raised with one eye shut during the first few months of life, it would be permanently blind in that eye. Their research was some of the earliest to demonstrate how stimulation of the brain in the earliest period of life has lasting effects. This "use it or lose it" phenomena also appears to apply to musical and linguistic ability in people.

At least two studies of musicians (Christo Pantev et al. 1998 and Baharloo et al. 1998) found that the age at which musicians began studying music was a key factor in those demonstrating perfect pitch as well as those showing a larger portion of the brain associated with pitch recognition. In the first study of six hundred musicians, forty percent of those who began taking music at four years of age showed perfect pitch while only three percent of those who began at nine years of age did so.

Early exposure to music not only results in increased musical aptitude, but researchers at the University of California, Irvine found it also increased other skills such as spatial reasoning. In one of their studies pre-schoolers were given music lessons for eight months and were then tested on their ability to draw geometric shapes, copy patterns of 2-color blocks and work mazes. The children who received the music stimulation scored significantly higher than those who did not. Similar studies (as reported in Neurological Research 1997) also found improvements in children's spatial reasoning following exposure to music (more specifically piano and singing) for at least six months.

Of course, music and language make an ideal partnership in developing a child's ability with foreign language as well. In their book "Accelerated Learning for the 21st Century", Colin Rose and Malcolm Nicholl state, "Infants who are routinely exposed to sounds from foreign languages such as songs and nursery rhymes develop tonal memories that enhance their ability to later learn multiple languages." According to linguistic experts, it's easier to learn a second language at the same time a child is learning his native tongue because "brain circuitry is wired with the ability to absorb both" during this early period. In later life the native language becomes solidified and "closed" serving as an impediment to foreign language acquisition.

Keep in mind that Spanish, for example, has exactly five vowel sounds while English has nearly twenty! The development of your child's ear to these sounds early in life will have a great effect on his ability to become fluent in the subtleties of English and other foreign languages.

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