Preschoolers - Connecting Symbols & Sounds

Parenting Tip:  Write a song using symbols!

Why?

Just as children must learn the relationship between sounds and letters and words in order to begin to decode or interpret the printed word, children learn the relationship between sounds and musical symbols in order to begin to decode or interpret the language of music or the printed page of music.

When preschoolers use symbols to represent sounds and even duration of sounds, and learn that they go in a progression of left to right they are making a path towards reading literature and also towards music reading.

How?

See Animals at Home!  Can you make your hands into the shape of each home, like in the Kindermusik rhyme, Where Do You Live (from the Home Sweet Home CD)?

Go on a House Hunt, to find many items around the house! Do you have any of those objects at your house?  Do they make a sound?  Can you create your own symbols to match? 

Get out a scraper instrument, and have your child show you how to play our symbols used in class (3 dots = 'tap, tap, tap';  3 waveforms = 'scrape, scrape, scrape;'  2 short swirly dots, and one longer swirly dot  = 'bzz, bzz,  bzzzzzzz;'  3 rectangles = 'swish, swish, swish')

Want to Learn More?

On our blog - Try your hand at the 'See the Music' game!
Also, discover that symbol recognition is just one, of Six Ways Kindermusik Prepares Young Children for Formal Music Lessons!

Kindermusik 7-Year Continuum:

Kindermusik babies associate visuals like puppets and pictures with words and songs.  As toddlers, Kindermusik kids actively listen for specific sounds, and connect those sounds to known objects (like the sound of a telephone, or of a puppy barking).  Your Kindermusik preschooler is just beginning to read iconic notation (instead of notes, we use pictures:  3 dots = the 'rap, rap, rap' of the hammer in 'Build Myself a House,'  3 colored rectangles = the 'brush, brush, brush' of the paint brush in the song, etc).  Big kids in Young Child classes go from iconic notation, to traditional music notation, as they learn to read rhythms and notes on the music staff.