Toddlers (12 - 33 months)
Your toddler can make many exciting discoveries through singing, dancing, and listening to music. Music and song provide lots of interesting words, rhythms, rhymes, and sounds for your toddler to listen to and imitate. Your toddler might not be able to pronounce the words in a song, but she’ll be pulled along by the music and try to sing words she hasn’t tried to say before.
Music encourages movement. You may think that your active toddler doesn’t need any extra encouragement to move around, but she’s very interested in testing her physical abilities. Bouncing to a beat, marching, clapping, dancing, spinning, jumping, doing hand motions and finger plays, and playing instruments can give your toddler a good workout!
The same rhythms that get your toddler moving are also helping her discover patterns in music. When your child is clapping, drumming, or moving with the beat, she’s anticipating a pattern. Recognizing and understanding patterns is good for your toddler’s future learning of math.
Music also gives your toddler opportunities to be creative and to share her creativity with you. Watch and enjoy when she figures out how to use the pot lids as cymbals, makes up her own good-night song, or does a happy dance.