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Music and Emergent Literacy

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Amber’s Note: I mentioned on Tuesday that Rock and Roll Garden was released but I was mistaken. It’s actually available beginning today! Bari Koral wanted it to coincide with the day she left for her honeymoon! Isn’t that fantastic, especially given why she wanted to get into kids’ music in the first place! Wishing Bari all the best this week.

When we first introduced books to Sammi around four or five months she only engaged with the ones that followed a song. She loved all the nursery rhyme books and all the ones that were fingerplays. We read/sang them over and over again. She squealed and clapped her hands, and then she started to turn the pages herself. then one day we were brave enough to attempt a non-music book again. It was short and rhyme-y and she loved it! This then opened up a new world for us. As long as it had a good rhyming pattern with a melodic flow, she loved it.

We progressed from that to non-song, non-melodic books and eventually she got really interested in stories. At first it was just really short, board book length stories. Now she can sit through books that are almost too long for my attention span and then ask for them again! And again!

Music is a great way to introduce books to little ones who don’t take an initial interest in books or holding still. If you can engage them with the song and have the book open next to you. They eventually make the connection. Two skills in emergent literacy are print motivation and phonological awareness. With print motivation you are trying to create a pleasant experience for your little one with books. By doing something your child loves-singing and dancing-while reading a book, you’re more likely to have a positive experience and so is your little one!

Music with its rhythm and rhymes is a great tool for little ones to understand language better. The rhythm of music helps little ones to hear all the parts of a word and sentence. The begin to understand the flow of language through music. Songs that rhyme help little ones to understand that sounds can be repeated in different words. This helps them to build their vocabulary by linking new words to already-known words because they share a similar sound.

Here are some great books that carry a tune:

What musical books have you discovered? A comment on today’s post is an extra entry in this week’s giveaway!

Comments

  1. My daughter loves the song “Over in the Meadow.” I had never even heard it when I was a kid, but it was on a toddler songs CD my mother-in-law gave us. I found an “Over in the Meadow” book in the library, and it was really cool. Here is a link to the book on Amazon http://bit.ly/8XIDKX, if you want to look at it.

  2. We have a bunch of story songbooks too. In addition to some of the ones you’ve mentioned, my gal has always loved the ‘5 Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed’ book (Eileen Christelow), ‘Baby Beluga’ (Raffi) and ‘ This Little Light of Mine’ (Inspirational Baby).

  3. This is such good advice. I really want my little girl (13 months) to love books but I don’t want to force her to like them (cause that’ll make her hate them) but she hasn’t had much interest in them. She does love the song books sO I think I’ll try more of them before we move on to stories again.

  4. @Heather-Thanks, I’ll check it out!
    @SkylarKD-I meant to mention Little Monkeys! Thanks for doing it for me. It’s a fun one. I’ll have to look into the other two. They sound great!
    @Chelsea-We spent a LOT of time on song books before she really wanted to move on to anything else. Rhyming books were the next step because they have the same flow.

  5. Juliet (age 1) has loved books from the very beginning! Singing has been part of her life from day one! She already bounces to music and “sings.” One of her favorites is “Hand Hand Fingers Thumb” (on your suggestion). When she brings it to me she is already bouncing!

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