Boogie Mites - Rhythm and Rhyme: Music and Literacy

Boogie Mites - Rhythm and Rhyme: Music and Literacy

Research indicates that the ability to coordinate and time our movements may impact upon children’s ability to learn to read and write. Movement involves timing skills, developing rhythmic awareness, which is important in the processing of language sounds. 

Rhymes are well known to help children’s language skills, but neuro-musical evidence suggests that there is much advantage to be gained from adding music and movement to rhymes.

“Neural connections between the auditory, visual and motor cortices of the brain are developed in a powerful, efficient and permanent way through music activities in early years.” - Dr Anita Collins, Neuromusical Researcher, Bigger Better Brains.

In the first article of this Boogie Mites music series in July Nursery World Magazine we considered neuro-musical evidence with a focus on beat keeping skills, promoting use of junk percussion activities. In this article, we consider developing rhythmic skills further through dance, movement or actions in time with musical rhymes.

Let’s first consider rhymes, then adding music and movement with the benefits this brings for developing rhythmic awareness and the related benefits for memory and learning.

Rhymes

Nursery rhymes are a valuable part of language development in early years, not least because of the regular repetition of these rhymes at home, toddler groups and nursery, providing the repetition required to develop the neural networks associated with language processing. Lullabies, nursery rhymes and traditional songs carry a special ‘signature’ of melodies and inflections which helps prepare babies’ ears, voices and brains for language. Regular opportunities to hear these songs and rhymes will support development of auditory processing skills and matching syllable beat patterns to language, all of which are known to support strong reading and writing skills. 

A commonly known and quoted ‘fact’ about the importance if rhymes for literacy is “Experts in literacy and child development have discovered that if children know eight nursery rhymes by heart by the time they’re four years old, they’re usually among the best readers by the time they’re eight.” (Mem Fox 2001, Reading Magic). But maybe this has actually had a negative impact on music in early years settings, because they believe they are maximising potential benefits of music provision through use of traditional rhymes.  This is not the full picture, as more recent studies have revealed that music and movement have a valuable part to play in developing early literacy skills. Adding recorded music, singing, keeping the beat and dance to rhyme time gives us an even more powerful development tool.

Rhythmic Awareness

Encouraging children to move in time to music helps them develop a sense of rhythm. This rhythmic awareness further consolidates the learning of the patterns and order of language sounds. Music encourages movement, and together they stimulate the brain connections between the auditory, visual and motor cortices, assisting the learning process. Timing is an important aspect of learning to read – an awareness of sound segments requires the ability to anticipate breaks in language sounds. Adding movement to songs further reinforces the rhythms in language. 

Music, Movement and Memory

Kinaesthetic learning - learning by doing - often helps to embed memory. Music is motoric – it incites us to move; children love to dance, stamp, march, skip, and bob up and down to musical sounds. When tasks become automatic - when we can almost undertake a physical task without thinking about what we’re doing - we use ‘muscle memory’. Young children need to develop muscle memory by learning to move, balance and perform fine and gross motor skills, without thinking. Musical activities help to forge memories. We remember songs easier than rhymes, and rhymes easier than non-rhyming text. Moving to music therefore has a double impact upon language learning. 

Rhymes with music and movement together thereby increase the chances of supporting language and literacy development with learning being retained and recalled via muscle memory. As a bonus, music is an engaging and fun activity that does not become boring with repetition, providing all the benefits of repetition for developing strong neural pathways.

It is therefore a powerful tool for early years educators to use such multisensory methods of rhymes, music and movement to build early literacy foundations.
Activities:

• Play recorded music of different genres and encourage freestyle dancing

• Use instrumental versions of actions songs like head shoulders knees and toes, so they can use memory to add words and actions

• Watch some dance videos and see how the children respond. Copy the moves yourself and see how they join in.

• Work out some simple dance routines to recorded action songs and encourage children to follow your moves, for example

o Big band music for marching
o Reggae music for swaying or bobbing up and down
o Simple dance routines to pop music
o Classical music for self-expression through movement

Boogie Mites have recently completed a project writing songs and interpreting some of them through movement and dance for some poems and nonsense rhymes written by Michael Rosen and published in his recent books: Ready For Spaghetti and A Great Big Cuddle.

You can watch a video clip of one of these musical rhymes here:

You can access the full video (and a video of a 3 year old's interpretation) to try with your children. We would welcome your feedback as this is a new project which we are testing with parents at the moment. Sign up to access the song: Hip Hap Happy. Once you have seen how your children respond, please complete the feedback form that will be emailed to you. Also share the Ambassador sign-up link that will be found with the videos and supporting resources, with your parents, so they can take part in our product testing pre-launch May 2023.

Boogie Mites Core Music Programmes:

Boogie Mites music programmes provide everything you need to boost your music provision in the setting and outside, for each age group, boosting movement, mood and cognitive development for all involved - staff and children. 

Boogie Mites School Ready Music Programme (3-5 years)

https://www.boogiemites.co.uk/shop/school-ready-training-package/

Boogie Mites Minis Music Programme (2-3 years) 

https://www.boogiemites.co.uk/shop/minis-music-training-package/

Boogie Mites Teenies Music Programme (crawlers to 2 years)

https://www.boogiemites.co.uk/shop/teenies-music-training-package/

Boogie Mites are offering a special 20% discount to Morton Michel policyholders as well as a programme launch meeting.  Apply the code BMMM20 at the checkout to receive your discount.

Contact sue@boogiemites.co.uk for information about onsite training options.

The information in this article is provided by Boogie Mites and does not represent Morton Michel.