Our fifth episode of “Parenting Talk Series” is another interview that every parent of young children should watch, whether you’re in HK or anywhere else in the world. Our topic is about how music is the foundation of learning for children.

As parents, we all know that music is important for children such as being told to listen to music when the baby is in the womb to using music to put them to sleep. However, a lot of parents do not really know the benefits of how music is the foundation of future learning for children.

So, we brought in Crisel Consunji, trained early childhood educator and founder of Baumhaus, Hong Kong’s #1 Kindermusik program for many years running, to explain to us how children learn using music with specific examples and tips on what parents can do at home to create an enriching learning environment through music for their kids.

As always, Little Monkey is here to provide information to help make parenting easier. This is so parents can make informed decision – whether that decision is on where to take their kids to play on the weekend by using our child-friendly directory to our new project – “Parenting Talk Series” – 30 minutes recorded interview with subject experts on all things parenting uploaded to our blog for the convenience of parents to watch whenever they like.

If you would like to contact Crisel and her team at Baumhaus, the contact details are below.

Here is a recap of what we spoke about and the visual aids after the video.

• Crisel Consunji a trained early childhood educator holding a M.ED in Early Childhood Education and is the co-founder of Baumhaus, a family focused creative space and arts-based education initiative for children 0-7 years old.

• Baumhaus is a creative community of empowered parents, educators and caregivers who have the same goal of empowering a family and supporting a child, nurturing them to find out their ability of expressing themselves through the language of the art. Hear Crisel explain her vision for Baumhaus and what she’s discovered about the community.

• Kindermusik is a 40 year old US program that addresses early childhood development through music by addressing how we use music, how do we play with sound, how we understand the rudiment and dynamics of it to apply to develop different domains of learning.

• We got right into the topic of how music is a foundation of learning and how Crisel and I arrived at this interview from our initial chat. There is a difference between learning music as an end to itself and using music as a way to develop different faculty – this interview is on the later part.

• Crisel helped explained how infants learn through multisensory methods, one year old learn through big movement as they start to walk, two years old (toddlers) become more verbal while three years old have higher learning by reasoning, creativity, and connecting with others. Music connects all these domain and stages.

• Music is a language that are made up of different components – rhythm, beat, tremble, tones, and pitch and these make up the attributes of how children process music. Crisel gave examples of how children process these components.

• These are the domains that Crisel listed where music plays a major part in developing for future learning.

• • language and literary,
  • cognitive and logic (math),
  • gross and fine motor,
  • social and emotional development,
  • creativity
  • musical skills.

• Crisel showed and explained how children learns numeracy through the beats without putting a name to the beats like 1, 2, or 3.

• When it comes to logic, rhymes and music helps children learn sequences and patterns. We then shared a video of 9 months old and how they were able to understand the shift between the two different types of movement. Crisel explains how this helps with learning other activities in a child’s lives in the future from dancing to swimming to adults who are able to make the connection quicker.

• Every child is different in how they learn and there is an understanding that all children respond through music from tapping their foot to swaying to music or with no response the first time. This is the same for any classes they go to and parents should give them a chance of several classes especially for younger kids to see if the class works for them. Hear from Crisel how her teachers approach the kids’ learning by earning their trust.

• Crisel explains how children learn language development through the sounds they hear and what is phonemic awareness as one concept of learning language. Another concept is through rhythms for the older kids as they use rhythm to learn the long and short sounds of language. And rhythms also help kid with the flow of speaking languages.

• Social skills are also developed when children have a chance to interact with each other in a classroom setting.

• We also spoke about musical instruments and when does a parent know that their child is ready to learn a musical instrument and Crisel gave us some examples of music readiness from their fine motor skills to being able to keep rhythm and other ways to tell. We also spoke about other classes to get a child ready to play an instrument such as a dance class and why.

• From birth to six years old, play is important as this will help them be prepare for other learning later on in life.

• We discussed why parents are the ones mostly moving and working during a young child’s class that are accompanied as we are the model for the child.

• Advice for parents on how to create a musical environment at home:

• • Play music (different music) at home so make music readily available for children
  • Sing with the child as this helps them learn all the different domains at home
  • Dance with them as this teaches them rhythm and beat
  • Let kids play with different types of home-made instruments such as kitchen metal bowls or a plastic tub, etc. so they can learn from the different types of sounds and how they can manipulate the sounds themselves

• Make memories and have fun with the kids with music as not only is it fun but they are learning!

Thank you so much to Crisel for explaining to us how important music is to our kid’s learning. This way, the next time we sing or listen to a song with our child, we can understand how they are learning. Please reach out to Crisel and her team at Baumhaus if you have any question about the Kindermusik program offer there. And as always, please feel free to reach out to us if you have any questions or suggestions on next topics that would help you on your parenting journey.

And we really hope these 30 minutes Parenting Help video interview is useful to you parents watching. As always, we advocate for each family to make the decision on what works for them and their kids.

Our next interview is with an expert on cloth diapering and all we need to know to make the journey easy and successful. So if cloth diapering is on your next green journey or you were curious how it all works, please stay tune for our next interview!

Below are the visuals we used during the interview for your information.