The following is the text from this section of the 2009-2010 edition of Child of the World, Montessori from Three to Six Years
To see other sections of this publication return to: http://www.michaelolaf.com/CWcontents.html

If you can walk, you can dance. If you can talk, you can sing.
—Zimbabwe Proverb

SINGING
Humans are born to sing. As soon as a child can focus on the mouth of the mother, he is studying how lips move and how sounds are made. When he begins to make intentional sounds and the adult imitates them, the first duet is born. Let us help the child continue with this joyful human creation.

There is no such thing as a nonmusical child, there are just nonmusical adults who did not get this practice as children. Songs give children a way of expressing emotions, and the very act of singing is a physical release. I have always watched for the casual, unintentional singing in class, knowing that it is a positive sign. In our home, hearing our son sing in bed as he went to sleep at night was a reassuring sign that his life is in balance. We do not need beautiful voices to model singing for children.

Singing also gives practice in language, new words, poetry, and historical and other cultural information.

In a class, where children work individually instead of having group lessons, the teacher will sing a song, make music, dance, at any time during the day with two or three children who aren't busy. Others may join in as they please. Any child can make music whenever she feels like it.

MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS
It is important for children to realize that music is always the result of body movements. Even if there are natural sounds, children need to understand that music is produced by human beings using various muscles of the mouth, hands and arms.

They should know how many different instruments there are and should have the opportunity to witness how musicians control their gestures so as to obtain different musical sounds. —Dr. Silvana Montanaro

To help a child experience this important part of a good education, we recommend real percussion instruments from different countries of the world, as well as Western classical instruments, for quality, variety, and beauty of sound, and for the connection to different cultures.

Listening to a heartbeat with a stethoscope, then tapping out the rhythms of the children's names (Jennifer = x x x, Alex = x x) with the instruments is a good introduction to rhythm.

Children at this age are very open to learning the techniques of instruments considered very difficult—such as piano or violin—when they have a system of learning, such as Suzuki, which bases its teaching on the natural development of children.

COMPOSERS
Stories of composers, especially stories about when they were children, are always interesting and important for young children. They show that famous composers did not just spring full-grown into being, but were regular children who became interested in writing down the music in their heads.

What does not exist in the cultural environment will not develop in the child.
—Dr. Shinichi Suzuki

LISTENING TO MUSIC
Just as beautiful speech comes from years of listening, music appreciation and accomplishment comes from years of listening to music.

Songs, folk, ethnic, and classical music played on real instruments, experimentation with good percussion instruments, ideally are all a part of the daily life of every child.

We can help a musical ear's development by being careful to eliminate background sound—TV, radio, constant random music—so that the sense of hearing is ever alert and not "turned off" by too much auditory input.

A new form of educational system will not appear until we give serious consideration to the fact that we have a "double mind." Children at any age must be offered a balanced experience of VERBAL and INTUITIVE thinking to help develop the great potential of the human mind. The results will not only include better functioning of the brain but also greater happiness in personal and social life.

In Western education, we tend to separate them, because many of the things the right hemisphere (intuitive) is able to do are not highly valued in our civilization. So from a very young age, children learn not to express themselves completely with that hemisphere because they haven't been urged to give much importance to body-movement in dancing or in singing, drawing . . . all the arts. In Eastern civilizations, however, greater importance tends to be given to the intuitive part of the brain; the logical hemisphere is considered irrelevant in solving the real problems of our existence.

It is a source of great hope for our immediate future that the most advanced human beings of both cultures are uniting in the recognition that we need each other to become complete and that we have a lot to share. —Dr. Silvana Montanaro, MD

© Susan Mayclin Stephenson, 2010 (www.susanart.net)
Permission to reprint or link to a website is granted if these words are include:
"Shared with permission of The Joyful Child Montessori Company: www.thejoyfulchild.us"

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