In my newsletter published last July( see link here) I have set out some interesting recent reports and findings on this subject by numerous music neuroscience experts regarding the positive impact of music on cognitive, social and emotional development in children.

During the holidays, I had the opportunity to read a great book entitled "The Musical Child" by Joan Koenig, a pioneering music educator based in Paris. The biggest takeaways from the book for me is how as teachers we should approach our music teaching of young children in ways that are in line with the natural learning process of a language. The author advocates that music learning should best be approached and synchronised with the young child's physical, cognitive and emotional development in order to get the best learning outcome. As parents you may find many gems and tips in this wonderful book as you ride the music lesson journey with your child. See a snippet of the book available on the author's website here.

I am really pleased that our students are learning music at Forte based on such a philosophy and approach. Even our more advanced students (those preparing for music exams), have found great joy and fun learning their repertoire and technical work using what we call the "whole body learning" approach. We teach music in a multimodal fashion which incorporates singing, movements, percussion instruments and eye-catching tactile props. We observe that our students have found such "off the bench" learning incorporating movements (for eg clapping, tapping on the body or a drum, physical movements like dance steps or verbalizing the melodic lines) more engaging, effective and fun! They are more likely to retain the learning in between lessons even with minimal practice frequency because the learning goes to their implicit memory.

Here is a snippet of a conversation between Forte co-founder, Gillian Erskine with Dr. Robyn Staveley. As part of her Ph.D., Dr. Staveley viewed several classes at Forte School of Music. The findings of her Ph.D. showed that using multi-sensory and multi-modal teaching strategies are more effective and brain friendly, which helps children embody the learning for a better musical outcome.

I hope the above gives you some perspective of the importance of learning and playing music and staying on the course not simply to benefit from the cognitive development aspects but for staying on the journey long enough in order that your child can acquire all the fundamental skillsets to play music lifelong!

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