5 Ways Music Boosts your Child’s Learning
- The brain responds to rhythm, melody and patterns, which increases the brain’s neural pathways. Whether performing or listening to music, more neural connections in the brain are activated. This leads to easier learning.
- Learning a musical instrument has long-term effects on the brain because it enhances the development of reason, memory, logic, visual shapes, and math. One of Mozart’s favorite hobbies was math, and music is highly structured like math.
- Music increases your child’s verbal memory. A study at the University of Heidelberg in Germany showed that the auditory cortex of musicians was 130 percent larger than that of nonmusicians. A benefit of the larger cortex size is the ability to learn verbal skills faster and to remember them easier.
- Listening to background music improves learning. The steady rhythm, melodic movement, mood and harmony of music makes it easier to take in new concepts and ideas.
- Music creates a balance in the brain. Learning new material such as math is a very left-brained activity, and music helps the brain to form patterns that enhance concentration. The music also awakens the creative, artistic right side of the brain for balance.
Give your child the opportunity to participate in music programs, whether at school or privately. They’ll thank you for it someday!
You can find more information about how music aids learning in my book, Music, Healing and Harmony Music, Healing and Harmony: Sally Fletcher: 9780961551308: Amazon.com: Books
Music is a more potent instrument than any other for education, because rhythm and harmony find their way into the inward places of the soul. Plato (429-347 B.C)