Early Childhood Vocal Development

Babies are born with natural musicality. If you listen carefully to the infant's cooing, and even crying you will notice melodic tendencies. Baby will repeat the same intervals over and over. As the infant develops she or he has the natural ability to match pitch. When you ohh and ahh to your baby pay attention to the ohhs and ahhs you receive in return, you'll notice that baby is able to repeat the pitch you gave. Keep your vowels and pitches simple at this stage when trying get an echo. One of the developmental benefits to singing to your baby is that that baby will be more willing to experiment with elongated vowels when cooing. When the baby hears singing, it motivates the infant to try out those sounds because singing emphasizes the vowels, which are the first sounds baby is able to articulate.

As the baby reaches toddlerhood the ability to match pitch may or may not remain apparent. Don't worry if it doesn't, keep your child in a musical environment to ensure that all facets of music making will be in place when the child's body is ready. You may notice your toddler singing phrases over and over, or leaving words and notes out--this is called "approximation of singing." 60% of Adults in North America get stuck at this stage of music making because they were not in an environment where music making happened while they were young. It is possible to progress past this point, but much easier if a music foundation is provided during the window of development. It is important to remember that vocal development mirrors language development, we don't expect toddlers to form full sentences at this age, so we shouldn't expect them to sing at a performance level. The important thing is to not let this frustrate you, or think it is the extent of your child's ability. You wouldn't stop talking to your child because they only use three words! Sing to your child, let them feel rhythm with their bodies, give them age appropriate instruments to play along with favorite recordings. A child reared in a music making environment will be able to sing tunefully at the age of 6 or 7, when they are developmentally ready.

MusikGarten is designed to help the family provide a music making environment, and work with the developmental stages of the child so that a strong musical foundation is laid while the windows for learning are most open. It uses the "Gordon Path to Literacy" as its model. The first step is the "Musical Birth" the first experiences with music. The second step in the path is the "Aural Foundation" (what the baby hears). MusikGarten provides a repertoire that time has proven effective. We sing folk songs, and simple melodies because hearing those patterns will provide the infant a foundation of tonal reasoning. The next stage is an "Aural/Oral Foundation", when the baby is experimenting with mimicking and inventing sounds, and language is developing. MusikGarten nourishes this step by using "Patterning" the teacher gives a simple pattern, and the class repeats it. As the baby/toddler gets more comfortable they will experiment with pitch and rhythm patterns, and also be able to repeat given patterns. The next step is the use of "Symbolic Language". This is introduced in the Cycle's class by adding Solfege (do, re, mi, fa, sol...) and the Gordon Language to the patterns, providing the children with names for each pattern they are already familiar with. The MusikGarten program actually takes the child all the way through to understanding theory, although I am not yet offering those courses.

If you are interested in finding out more about MusikGarten in the Morningside Heights area of Manhattan please contact me breckengarten{at}gmail{dot}com.

This information was presented to me at the Long Island Cycles of Season's Training by Leilanie Miranda.