There are so many benefits of musical instruments for toddlers and preschoolers that they should be found in every home too. And no, we do not mean you need to enroll your 3-year-olds in violin lessons.
We mean exposing your children to different instruments from a young age and letting them play freely and explore the sounds.
Thursday, March 16th
At such a young age, the goal of playing with instruments is not yet to master a particular instrument but to achieve different skills that come with playing and experimenting with them!
Here are six advantages of musical instruments for toddlers’ and preschoolers’ development:
1. Fine Motor Skills
Holding and manipulating instruments is a great fine motor skills practice. In addition, children need to learn to coordinate their fingers and develop control to produce sounds.
2. Gross Motor Skills
Instruments can also work the body’s large muscles; incorporating movements into musical activities, such as marching to the beat of the rhythm sticks, dancing to the melody, or banging on large drums, helps children with their gross motor skills and coordination.
3. Cause and Effect
Cause and effect is a skill children learn in their early years. It means, “when I do this, then this happens.” It’s an essential cognitive skill.
As babies discover that when they shake the rattle, it produces a sound, older preschoolers can learn that each bar on the xylophone makes a different sound and that hitting them in a certain way creates a melody.
4. Learning About Sound
Auditory perception is an essential pre-reading skill, and music is an excellent way to develop it. Playing with instruments teaches children about sounds and how they are made.
5. Concentration
As children experiment with the sounds and learn to create rhythms and melodies, they also develop their attention spans. Any activity that holds a child’s interest will do this.
6. Musical Appreciation
Developing an appreciation for music is not just about listening to the music around us but also about having exposure to the instruments that create it.
Music is relaxing, good for the soul, and an art form children can learn to appreciate.
This article is a re-post, with minor modifications, of “16 Benefits of Musical Instruments for Toddlers and Preschoolers,” published on empoweredparents.com
