How To Encourage Musical Children

Music can be very beneficial to children in lots of different ways. Playing or listening to music can be a fun thing to do together, a way for them to learn new skills, a way to develop and express creativity, and a way to explore their emotions. If your child has shown an interest in music, how you can encourage their musical passions to develop?

For younger children, music can be a form of play, but older children may be starting to take it more seriously. If they’re beginning to consider music as a career, they may find the resources from musician mentors useful, like guides produced by Joey Armstrong.

Encourage Listening Skills

Getting children to begin to explore music can be a fun thing to do together. As you listen, ask them to describe to you what they can hear, so they can start to develop their listening skills. Choose a piece of music, and ask them questions while you listen. Ask questions like:

• What sounds can you hear?
• How would you describe this piece of music?
• How does it make you feel?

Having these conversations can also help your child to build their communication skills. 

Play Along To Music

Children love making noise, and a musical instrument such as pianos in Singapore, is a good way to channel that noise into something creative. Encourage them to play along with a song they like so they can explore the different parts of the music. 

Suggest they try to play as loudly, and then as quietly as they can with different ways of making sound, such as clapping, or tapping a pan with a spoon.

Another fun game to help them understand beat and volume, is to ‘wake’ a sleeping toy. Using one of their stuffed animals, ask the child to wake it up by playing loudly, and make the toy sleep by playing quietly. You can move the toy around in time with the beat too. 

Move To Music

Children often really enjoy dancing, and you can combine this with an enjoyment of music. Tempo is the speed in music, and children can get a good grasp of what this means by exploring it physically. 

Put on some music, and suggest to your child that they move as they listen. Watch to see what they do, then join in too, copying their ideas. By mimicking their physical ideas, they will see that you value and are interested in their ideas. 

For some children, physically responding to music might feel a lot more natural than playing instruments or talking about music. 

Offer them lots of different genres of music to try, and see how they respond and move to different kinds of music. You might be surprised by what they enjoy. Music that has a range of tempos in it can be great fun to try too. 

Try listening to music from around the world too, from a range of cultures. This is a good way to explore music, and open conversation about different cultures too.