Using Music to Teach at Home

Music is a key part of life for everyone, whether you』re a child or an adult and whether you speak English or Mandarin. We hear music on the radio, in class, on TV and throughout our day.

Think about how quickly you learned a company』s jingle after hearing it only once or twice. Your mental capacity to absorb music is the main reason we use music in all of our classes!

Kids find it fun and easy to learn just about anything through music: the alphabet, colors, body parts, feelings and days of the week, just to name a few.

In fact, children learn to sing before they learn to speak properly. That』s why a child can sing the entirety of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star even before she knows how to make complete sentences.

It』s quite common for young learners to not understand all of the words that they are saying.

That』s how they learn! They slowly internalize the vocabulary in the lyrics and then recognize them in other settings.

Further down the road, they learn to recognize the grammar from the song and begin to apply the same structures when speaking in full sentences.

As a bonus, singing and dancing is simply a lot of fun! Children often do not even realize they are learning. Movement can also help to enforce meaning.

For example, the gestures we use when we teach Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes help them to learn in words and in action the names of different body parts.

The same principle also works beautifully for The Hokey Pokey.

Teachers at Sunshine Home are always happy to share the music that they use in their classrooms.

You can learn the songs to sing together and ask your child about the lyrics: 「What do these words mean?」 or 「How does this music make you want to move?」

You can extend your child』s classroom experience and turn it some quality time with your child by singing and dancing together at home!