Musical Memory for Toddlers

Parenting Tip:  Add music to your daily routine to boost your toddlers' memory!

Why?

Short-term memory has the ability to hold about seven bits of information.  But, when patterns and related groupings of information are bound together as a unit, the volume of material stored increases.  Patterns then become an important avenue for recall and memory (Rhythms of Learning - Chris Brewer & Don G. Campbell).

Learning to recognize patterns means information—language, music, and movement—can be decoded, organized, and remembered more easily.

As children develop pattern-recognition abilities, their learning potential is greatly enhanced because their brains are building skills in prediction and categorization, which can be applied to any new information they encounter.

How?

Enjoy a movement game! 

Next, create a family & friends 'flip book,' with your child! 

Cue up a favorite song from Kindermusik's Family & Friends CD (maybe Hop Up, My Baby?), and create a movement pattern, as a family!  Bounce to the verses, and hop up, on the matching lyrics.  What if you walked & jumped, instead?  Or tiptoed & stretched?  Or...

Want to Learn More?

On our blog - learn why musicians have an advantage, when it comes to memory.  And, enjoy a free 'memory game,' with your child.

Kindermusik's 7-year Continuum:

Kindermusik babies use songs to remember when it is time for class to begin, when it is time for rocking together, and when it is time to say goodbye.  As a toddler, your child starts focusing on details in the music & lyrics, to know when it is time to 'Hop Up!'  Kindermusik preschoolers take this musical memory a step further, by listening for the right place in the song to play their instruments (is it time for the 'see-saw-see' sound, yet?  How many beats before I tap the triangle?)  Big kids in Young Child classes use their musical memories to know which note comes next on their glockenspiel, by reading notation on a staff, singing the melody from memory, then transferring those notes to the glockenspiel as they sing.