Whether you are musical or not, you can add the element of music to your child's life. Experts agree that music can strengthen children's minds and serve as a fundamental skill of learning.
Music develops children's sense of patterning and memory skills. Some say music "nourishes children's brains". Music stimulates brain connections and can actually make children smarter.*

Listed below are ways you can add music to your child's life.

• Play a variety of music in the background when your child is playing.
• Encourage your child to move to the beat of music.
• Introduce simple instruments to your child such as a play guitar or harmonica.
• Show your child how to make their own instruments such as simple drums and shakers.
• Teach your child simple children's songs such as "Eensy, Weensy Spider" and "Mary Had A Little Lamb".
• Show your child how to keep time to the beat of music through clapping and tapping.
• Help your child make up their own songs by adding new words to familiar tunes.
• Discuss music that is fast and slow; music that is high or low.
• Have your child draw to music and express what the music tells them on paper.
• Teach your child how to hum a tune.
• Sing familiar songs and have your child fill in the rhyming words at the end of some lines.

*Studies by Frances Rauscher and her colleagues at the Center for Neurobiology & Memory at the University of California at Irvine.