How Can Music Impact Speech Development in Children?
Music is known to improve an individual’s mood and well-being; however, music can also affect the development of speech. This blog will talk about how music can support the development of speech in children.
Music as a Speech Development Strategy:
SLPs can use music as a strategy to improve speech. Music and rhythm help with learning, memory, vocabulary acquisition, speech fluency, and expression. The benefits of using music to promote speech development include:
Memory improvements: Songs can be quite repetitive, in both lyrics and rhythm, which creates predictability. This repeated information allows children to process the songs easier and solidify them in their memory. Songs also engage different areas of the brain responsible for memory, emotion, and cognition. This creates connections in the brain and allows children to build a stronger memory and retrieve information quicker.
Speech fluency: Fluency can also be improved by music. The repetitive nature of songs allows children to become more familiar with certain words and their pronunciation. The rhythm of music also aligns with the patterns of speech. This can give children an idea of how to produce speech smoothly and easily. By listening to music, children can learn how to speak with proper flow and timing.
Learning: By listening to songs, children can learn emotions, movement, words, and meaning. For example, nursery rhymes such as Old MacDonald Had a Farm, help children learn about different animals and the sounds they make. Songs like these help children begin to understand the meaning behind words and how to use them.
Vocabulary acquisition: Songs can help children learn vocabulary and the pronunciation of words. Songs expose children to new words and teach them how to properly pronounce them. Furthermore, many songs tell stories, allowing children to understand the context behind words and learn how to apply them in real-life scenarios.
Expression: Music conveys many different emotions ranging from anger to excitement. Music also activates areas of the brain responsible for emotion. So, by listening to music, children can feel different emotions and listen to what emotion the music or singer is trying to convey. By listening and understanding the emotions behind music, this can help children learn to express themselves through their own stories. It also can help them communicate their own feelings more effectively.
How to Support Speech Development with Music at Home:
Incorporating music at home is important for developing a child’s speech and supporting their language development. Some ways you can encourage speech development through music are:
Singing to them: When you sing to a child, whether it be a song or something you have made up, it introduces them to language. It also engages your child and teaches them about language in a fun, motivating way. Singing slowly is important as well, so the child grasps the information, develops knowledge of the words, and learns patterns of speech.
Playing nursery rhymes and songs: Playing videos online or acting out nursery rhymes is also beneficial for speech development. Nursery rhymes are very repetitive and engaging for children. By listening to nursery rhymes, children can learn about things like animals, body parts, food, etc. Moreover, by playing the videos associated with the nursery rhyme, children can visualize the words they are hearing and understand what the word represents in the real world. Nursery rhymes also provide children with imitation skills. For example, the itsy-bitsy spider teaches children how to do different actions and what those actions mean (e.g., climbs up the waterspout- children move their hands up and learn that the “up action” means something higher).
Letting them sing the lyrics: By playing songs and nursery rhymes continuously, children will eventually learn songs. Once they do become familiar with songs, let them sing the lyrics or fill in a missing lyric. This will help the child practice their own language skills/pronunciation, their memory recall skills, and learning skills. Being silly by singing the wrong lyric to a song can encourage them to use their memory skills and try to find the correct lyrics and practice their own speech.
Playing with instruments: Instruments are super important not only for children’s motor skills, but also their development of expression. You can use anything in your home to act as an instrument. By allowing them to play their own music they can express themselves freely through music and develop listening/processing skills. They also can make up their own songs, which encourages creativity and language acquisition. This also allows them to learn how to express themselves and learn how to communicate feelings.
Dancing to music: Dancing to music is not only fun but can also be a useful tool/activity. While dancing to music can encourage balance/coordination, it also can provide children with connecting words to movements. For example, the Baby Shark Dance can teach children how physical actions connect to the words they are learning (e.g., acting out running away teaches children what that phrase means).
Conclusion:
In all, music is incredibly beneficial for the development of speech/language in children. SLPs can use it to promote memory, learning, and fluency in their clients, and parents can use music too to support their child’s communication. This way, children can learn vocabulary quicker, understand what words mean, learn the proper pronunciation of words, and they can do it in a fun and engaging way!
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