Cycle of Seasons Classes, which take a "whole child" approach to musical learning through movement will provide your child the opportunity to hone skills needed for scholarly success, continued musical success, and even success at dance and sports.
By age three children have gained some independence, and are ready to learn to focus their attention. A variety of focused listening games are played in class to help your child begin "tuning in". This paves the way for discriminating between different types of instruments and musical styles in the next age group, and builds listening skills that are vital to academic success.
Rhythm and tonal patterns that are learned in class are building a musical vocabulary and helping your child to understand how music works, before we start to learn the symbols and notation that will be used to read music later. In this way, we are teaching music in the same way that we teach children to read- sounding things out and building from the syllables up.
The ancient Greeks believed that music was one of the four branches of math! Scientific studies show that rhythm and tonal patterns help to build temporal reasoning skills and spacial awareness that are used for math and science. What this means is that your child will learn to make a mental image and think ahead in space and time to solve a language based problem. Yes- all of that from some fun beats on the tambourine and drum!
In Cycle of Seasons classes, we continue to incorporate lots of movement into every class; because, children not only learn the best through movement until around age eight or so, but best enjoy learning through movement too.
The structured, creative and dance movements we do in class also use both fine and gross motor skills, and help to develop the vestibular system of the inner ear, which is used for balance and co-ordination. This helps not only with music, but with sport, dance or any other activity your child may wish to participate in later.
So, when you give your child the gift of music for another year, you can pat yourself on the back that you are also enriching their social lives, giving them a boost in their math and language skills, and helping their bodies to become fine tuned for whatever athletic goals they may set in the future.
For more information on the Cycle of Seasons program, click the preschoolers link below.
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