Toddlers Can Create Musical Expression Through Dynamics

Parenting Tip: Play with loud and quiet sounds, this week!

 

Why?

For 2 & 3-year-olds, learning through opposites is a very effective way to present new concepts.  The opposite concepts of loud & quiet (musical 'dynamics') can be effectively experienced through playing instruments, singing, and listening. 

Movement can be incorporated into the experience as the children vary their motions, making them large and small, or heavy and light to express loud and quiet with their bodies. 

It's also important for children to begin to experience loud and quiet as an aspect of musicality.  It's natural for children to delight in playing loudly, but it requires much more emotional and physical control for young children to create music quietly.

 

How?

Get out an instrument or sound maker, and explore ways to play it loud and quiet. 

Turn on a favorite song from Kindermusik's Up in the Sky CD, and play the beat!  Does your child prefer loud or quiet sounds with the instrument?

Play a dynamics game!  At home, or out & about, play a game using loud and quiet voices.  (Look – a bird!  Is he loud or quiet?  Can you make quiet bird sounds?...) 

 

Want to Learn More?

On our blog - for ideas using loud and quiet music, read 10 Secret Musical Tricks Every Parent Should Know!

 

Kindermusik's 7-Year Continuum:

As a baby, your child watched and listened as you made loud and quiet sounds in class.  Now, as a toddler, she is exploring ways to make loud & quiet sounds, herself (following your lead).  As a preschooler, your child will learn musical terms for loud (forte) and quiet (piano), and will make decisions on his own about which sounds should be loud, and which should be quiet (should the lion be represented by a loud sound, or quiet?).  As a big kid in Young Child classes, your child will use piano and forte in the playing of songs on instruments (when the mouse is sneaking, play 'piano,' and when he runs away, play 'forte!').  In addition, they will learn other dynamics terms, like 'crescendo' (going from quiet to loud), and 'decrescendo' (going from loud to quiet).