We all know that young children enjoy music, but did you realise that singing with your child is a fantastic way to support the development of their communication skills?
From before birth, infants are responsive to music, with young infants biologically prepared to process pitch and rhythmic structure.1 As children move into the toddler years, the rhyme, rhythm and repetitive nature of musical words along with the gestures that accompany many children’s songs catch a young child’s attention and can provide a more accessible way to learn language.
Singing with your young child helps them build attention and listening skills which are crucial for language learning. In addition, singing together supports the development of social skills and can introduces children to different emotional states. Songs also introduce new vocabulary and concepts and are repetitive so there are many opportunities to learn and practice new words. The gestures that accompany many children’s songs provide additional context to help a young child understand what is being sung plus gestures, along with the rhythmic, repetitive nature of a song, serve as a memory aid, making it easier for a young child to remember and learn words and concepts through singing. Songs also introduce children to basic sentence structure and provide the opportunity to practice speech sounds.
As children get older, research has shown that “musical training results in better achievement in domains other than mere music performance, such as verbal abilities, second language learning, non-verbal reasoning and general intelligence”.2
With all the positives of singing and enjoying music with your child, the only question now is, what song should you sing? Here are some of my favourites!
- The Wheels on the Bus
- Wind the Bobbin Up
- Five Little Ducks Went Swimming One Day
- Old MacDonald had a Farm
- Itsy Bitsy Spider
- Five Little Men in a Flying Saucer
- Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star
- Five Little Monkeys Jumping on a Bed
- Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes
- London Bridge is Falling Down
- Row, Row, Row Your Boat
- The Grand Old Duke of York
- Five Green and Speckled Frogs
If you are looking for a more sophisticated song to sing with your child, there are many pop and rock songs online signed with Makaton making it a perfect way to introduce your child to your music!
If you would like more information about children’s speech and language, please get in touch. Follow us on Facebook for more speech, language and feeding tips and sign up for South Lakes Speech & Language Therapy’s newsletter if you would like new posts sent directly to your inbox.
- Nguyen T, Flaten E, Trainor LJ, Novembre G. Early social communication through music: State of the art and future perspectives. Dev Cogn Neurosci. 2023 Oct;63:101279. doi: 10.1016/j.dcn.2023.101279. Epub 2023 Jul 27. PMID: 37515832; PMCID: PMC10407289. ↩︎
- Miendlarzewska EA, Trost WJ. How musical training affects cognitive development: rhythm, reward and other modulating variables. Front Neurosci. 2014 Jan 20;7:279. doi: 10.3389/fnins.2013.00279. PMID: 24672420; PMCID: PMC3957486. ↩︎