No child is too young for music learning. Infants have the distinct advantage of a musical mind unencumbered by the thinking mind. Their inability to yet engage in movement or singing is countered by their ability to take in all that is musical. Babies, too, not yet dominated by language, are most ripe for music learning. The toddler’s life is dominated by language, but the musical imagination is yet pristine. We just have to speak the language of the musical mind and avoid the language of the thinking mind. The charming, deliberateness of the toddler’s singing, chanting and movement propels the understanding of the musical mind, literally, to its external expression.
Three to five year olds offer the innocence of the young musical mind, with greater physical development for singing, chanting, and movement. Their thinking minds, however, are also more developed, with language as the dominant force. The older children get, the more we have to get the thinking mind out of the way in order to access the musical mind, and the more our classes are necessarily remedial.
The young child’s musical mind offers a world of wonder that has been all but totally untapped. It is in a realm of its own with its own kind of learning process and meaningful activities. Rhythm and tonal narratives are “aural toys” for the young child to play with—to explore, to chew on, to manipulate aurally—over and over and over, as young children do with any toys. Our involvement with the children and the “aural toys” evolves into “aural games” of interaction that serve to draw out the child’s rhythm and tonal knowing, just as parents draw out children’s understanding of language as they learn to speak. Our movement and breath with “aural toys and games” provides not only a model, but “virtual movement” and “virtual breath” for young children, as they internalize them as if their own.
Little children understand far more musically than their little bodies can yet deliver. They have so much to teach us about the musical mind.
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