9: How a Music Education Helps with Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic Skills in the Homeschool

Join Gena Mayo on the Music in Our Homeschool podcast as she explores the profound impact of music on reading, writing, and arithmetic skills in young children. In this enlightening episode, Gena reaches into the research-backed benefits of integrating music into homeschooling, particularly through programs like KinderBach for young children. With insights drawn from decades of experience as a homeschooling mom and music teacher, Gena explains how music fosters essential cognitive and motor skills crucial for academic success. From decoding and rhythm recognition to fine motor coordination and sequential learning, Gena demonstrates how music education seamlessly intertwines with fundamental aspects of early childhood development. Gena empowers homeschooling parents to provide a comprehensive education that nurtures both academic excellence and musical proficiency. Tune in to discover how KinderBach offers a user-friendly and effective solution for integrating music into your homeschool curriculum, enriching your child's educational journey and fostering a lifelong love of music. Find it here: KinderBach
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Transcript

How Music Helps with Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic Skills

[00:00:00] We've heard that music helps with reading, writing, and arithmetic skills for our young children. But how? And how can you actually include a music program in your home that will help your preschoolers grow in these skills?

Those are some questions we'll be answering today. 

If you are a homeschooler looking for ways to easily and affordably include a quality music education in your homeschool, you've come to the right place. This is the Music in Our Homeschool podcast. I'm Gena Mayo, homeschooling mom of eight and music teacher for over 30 years.

We are just at the beginning to understand the importance of music in a child's development. The research has come back showing an incredible difference in the math and language skills of preschool students who had early lives with music compared to those without.

It's significant to note that the most dramatic results were achieved by children who had piano lessons. These [00:01:00] children outperformed all other groups at puzzle solving up to 80 percent higher scores than the non musical children. Based on the research, students with music, specifically piano, in their preschool years have had more success in their later education.

We know these facts, but how does a homeschool parent, perhaps with no music background of her own, cover the space of education. What are the important parts in learning the piano for brain development? And who has the time to meet the curriculum standards and provide music? Given the time, where would one start? Well, KinderBach was created to be used by teachers and parents, regardless of their music background.

There are activity books, online videos, audio music tracks, and stories, and parents don't have to play anything other than the online videos. No instrument knowledge is necessary [00:02:00] ahead of time. We believe that every homeschool parent can teach. All they need is the correct information to communicate. So what is KinderBach?

KinderBach gives homeschooling parents, this tools to teach music. It provides a solid music foundation for the children while at the same time overlapping and enhancing basic math and language skills. With Kinderbach, music education is not an additional activity, but another method of covering math and early literacy.

It is a partnership that combines curriculum goals, and piano basics. KinderBach provides the teacher with the complete lesson plans, videos, worksheets, and age appropriate music learning activities. How does music help with reading? Well, first of all, it helps with decoding. The alphabet, phonics, and numbers are all symbols that need to be interpreted to [00:03:00] be understood.

Children need to be able to decode in order to read. Music is rich in simple sound and symbol relationships, a perfect precursor to reading language. With movement and rhythm, children can greatly increase their decoding skills. Number two, beat and rhythm. Language has natural, subtle rhythms to it.

Therefore, the ability to keep a steady beat is a good indication of a child's reading readiness. Understanding and duplicating rhythms encourage children to become rhythmic readers. Number three, common symbols. It helps that some of the music terms and symbols actually exist in our language. This fact makes piano lessons an easy overlap with reading.

And four is aural discrimination. Aural, spelled A U R A L, is determining the difference between [00:04:00] what you're hearing: High and low, loud and quiet, as well as interpreting what they hear. Number five is tracking. We read from left to right in English, and obviously that is an overlap with reading because you read music from left to right as well.

KinderBach provides easy, fun tracking exercises for children to learn to do, and that are not monotonous. They're very fun. Combined with the gross motor movements that cross the midline during singing, reading music, greatly enhances their tracking skills. Making music is one of the few activities that uses both sides of the brain, and it's very helpful in left brain integration.

Number six: articulation, phrasing, proper breathing, posture, and expression. These are all areas to be addressed in training good readers. Singing is also a positive and entertaining way to lay a firm foundation for [00:05:00] this. Folk songs in KinderBach provide cultural context to language. So how does music help with writing skills?

Well, number one, identification of left and right actually literally left and right for these preschoolers. Number two, separation of the hand, identification and numbering of the fingers. So that's important for piano, the thumb is number one, the index finger is number two, et cetera. Number three, coordination and control is exercised by playing at the keyboard.

Playing music uses both sides of your brain and not only because the piano can be played with both hands, but also because it combines motor skill learning with emotion. And fine motor skills is number four. Besides actually playing the piano with individual fingers, KinderBach has other activities for finger movement, coloring, cut and paste, as [00:06:00] well as circling or grouping symbols to identify them.

And then let's talk about how does music help with arithmetic. Number one, listening and identifying. The distance between tones strengthens the neural pathways. Physical movement emphasizing the difference speaks to the kinesthetic learners. Music is measurement and difference and listening to math or more commonly known as the Mozart effect.

Number two is sequential learning. It's an important math skill and music classes accomplish this by listening to a song, singing a song, playing it with rhythm instruments,, analyzing differences, and then playing it on the keyboard. Number three, beats and note value. The skill of identifying the beat value of a given note overlaps with basic math skills.

Playing rhythms deeply internalizes the skill. And then number four, the [00:07:00] division of measures with bar lines and time signatures. The spatial temporal part of the brain is exercised as notes are grouped and classified. So we know that music in the homeschool classroom is important and that preschool piano is the best way to take advantage of the musical window and brain development of a very young child.

KinderBach is an excellent and effective way to provide the musical advantage and yet address the basic curriculum foundations that we as homeschool moms know that we need to provide. So I encourage you to take a look at KinderBach over at Music in Our Homeschool. Links are in the show notes and the description.

And if you have any questions about this, please let me know. I'd be happy to answer them for you. Until next time, keep the music alive.