Music programs often grapple with a big question: should we give our students a variety of experiences learning different instruments, or should we get them to focus on learning and eventually mastering just one instrument? As almost always, the answer isn’t straightforward. In early childhood (between the ages of 0-5), providing opportunities for young children […]

In a new study, it has been found that preschoolers who have better vocabulary and attention skills are more likely to be better at school This is not a shocking finding. Early childhood educators have been aware of this connection and indeed school readiness programs focus on building both of these skills. The dots that aren’t […]

Did you know there are many types of sharing? When you stop and think about it, there are many ways we can share a toy or food, but most of the time, as parents or educators, we would say something like “let’s just be nice and share.” There is a whole field of research known […]

It may seem strange to think of a childcare centre that does not use music in some way. This could be passive background music or a song to sing and move along to on Youtube. We know about the many cognitive skills that interaction with music can create for your children, but why do we […]

Pitch pattern recognition is vital for both music comprehension and understanding the prosody of speech, which signals emotion and intent. But what happens when you can’t hear pitch patterns – do you enjoy music less and hear less emotion in speech? It is very hard to assess the enjoyment of music or speech, but it […]

To keep a beat, our brains have to get the auditory and motor cortices to first synchronise and then maintain that synchronisation as small things change in the music. To maintain a rhythm, our brains need to do all of that plus constantly monitor how the rhythm is fitting into the beat. It looks easy, […]

If you were to look at a standard weekly timetable for a kindergarten class, you would hopefully see at least one music learning class. This might be a 40, 50 or 60-minute class which, for 20 x 5-year-olds, would require a great deal of detailed planning by the teacher to maintain quality learning and engagement […]

Here is a fascinating new theoretical paper about the relationship between rhythm and language abilities. A theoretical study is one that brings together all the relevant current research and puts forward a theory of, in this case, how two concepts may be connected. In the diagram below you will see the researchers have put forward […]

Here is a great article to take along to your next staff meeting or use as a discussion point with other teachers in your school, particularly if it is a primary or elementary school. It is a good description of the current thinking and research into the way our ears are at the root of […]

Can second language ability be predicted through music? Well, maybe! This study tried to shed light on the following gap in our understanding. “While musicality and working memory are mostly treated as clear predictors of foreign language learning ability, the relationship between brain morphology and language aptitude is far from obvious.” Basically, we know that […]

The BBB Team has been hard at work to create exciting new content for our loyal followers, subscribers, educators and members, and we are excited to announce the new set of resources called the “How Music Learning Helps” series. The series consists of three informative documents to provide you with the research behind how music […]

The capacity for language is distinctly human. It allows us to communicate, learn things, create culture, and think better. Because of its complexity, scientists have long struggled to understand the neurobiology of language. In the classical view, there are two major language areas in the left half of our brain. Broca’s area (in the frontal […]