Show Your Child the Basics of Creativity
Young children need opportunities to make and learn about music and art in order to develop their creativity, competence, and confidence. Your child will thrive best in an environment where he or she can explore a wide variety of music, art, materials, and instruments – especially with a favorite adult.
Learning skills through music and art
While singing songs, beating drums, dancing with scarves, mixing colors, sharing modeling dough, or using handmade puppets, children are developing their cognitive, social, emotional, and physical skills. Music and art help teach your child about the world and how it works.
We know:
- All the arts support language and literacy. Children build vocabulary through songs, express ideas through artwork, and tell stories through role playing.
- Music demonstrates math and science principles through variations in rhythm, pitch, pattern, and tempo.
- Art reveals the science of light and color, cause and effect, and the properties of materials, as well as mathematical patterns and geometry.
- Dance helps children learn about their bodies and how they move, as well as basic principles such as fast/slow, high/low, near/far, up/down.
- Problem solving, social skills, self-expression, self-esteem, and small and large motor skills, are also a natural outcome of children making music and art.
Learning All About Music and Art
The creative arts provide universally enjoyable ways for children to communicate and celebrate and are a rich and rewarding part of life.
We know:
- Children are never too young to experience all kinds of music, instruments, and songs from cultures around the world. Learning about all kinds of art and artists develops an appreciation of diverse cultures and creative styles.
- Going to museums, galleries, concerts, and live performances, and celebrating music and art in the everyday life of their school, home, and community can help children develop a lifelong love of the arts and enthusiasm for making their own music and art.
