Using Music To Help a Child Develop Communication Skills
Music can help your child to :
- Take turns
- Imitate others’ words and actions
- Recognize and anticipate what comes next
- Engage in vocal and sound play
- Build language comprehension
- Develop new vocabulary
- Learn about rhyming
- Learn to listen
- Learn to wait
- Learn to express thoughts and feelings
- Develop Memory
Parents can help by:
- Singing songs and encouraging finger plays with their babies and toddlers – e.g. “Pat a cake”, Round and round the garden”, “Head and shoulders.”
- Sing action songs with their toddlers – e.g. “Wheels on the bus”, “If you’re happy and you know it”, “Skinnamarink”.
- Singing songs that include turn-taking – e.g. “Old McDonald Had a farm.”
- Sing songs during daily routines – e.g. “This is the way we wash our hands”, “Tidy up time….”
- Singing songs that develop literacy – e.g. rhyming songs “Down by the Bay”, Apples and Bananas”; songs to promote the alphabet learning “ABC song” and “B-I-N-G-O” song.
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