To get control of our inhibitory control, preschoolers might first need to get a hold of the beat!

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 may seem strange to think of a childcare centre that does not use music in some way. We know about the many cognitive skills that interaction with music can create for your children, but why do we have music in the first place?

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.”

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?

In this study, they found that 10 weeks of rock drum kit improved dexterity, rhythm, timing and the ability to maintain attention for children with autism.

Autism research, as well as ADHD, dyslexia and auditory processing disorder research, are using music processing and music learning as a tool to better understand each condition.

Prof Usha Goswami found that “dyslexia is not caused by children reading words incorrectly, but instead, by their inability to hear the rhythm of words when they are being spoken.”

Have you ever wondered what the connection between music and dyslexia might be? Researchers in Italy have provided a good description of the connection.

This summary could be very helpful for understanding the learning challenges faced by ADHD students in your music ensemble or classroom and also give you ideas on specific activities for focus or to help improve their skills.

The different types of connectivity are ultimately what makes every human unique. For children and adults with autism, it has been identified that the auditory and visual areas of their brains are highly connected.

The researchers built on top of the research that found that music learning could improve these “traffic black spots”. Hence, they used a music learning intervention to see if they could track changes in the auditory cortex and hemispheric activation in children with Dyslexia, ADHD and ADD.