Children's Songs - 12 Benefits
of Playful learning musical activities
Children's songs, especially children's songs that feature interactive activities including finger plays, hand and body movements, ASL, creative language use, rhyming, and lyric creation offer children a wide variety of fun and playful ways to learn language, vocabulary, educational concepts (ABCs, numbers, colors, rhymes, animals, shapes, etc.) along with developing fine and gross motor skills. Here are12 important benefits derived from children's song activities:
- Children's action songs strengthens memory and recall. Children’s action songs offer rich learning experiences that have children memorizing information in a variety of ways. Children’s action songs have children learning musically, verbally, visually, and physically - all at the same time. The combination of all of these learning styles, found in children’s action songs, strengthens memorization of information and the ability to recall what has been learned.
- Children's action songs develop fine and gross motor skills. Children’s action songs featuring finger plays, upper body and lower body movements, and American Sign Language, ASL, provide physical benefits. These movements encourage children to use their fingers, hands, and bodies for movements. The controlled actions found in these types of children’s songs help to support body movements and mind and body movement control.
- Children's action songs enhance hand-eye coordination. Finger plays and children's action songs featuring American Sign Language help children to coordinate their hands and fingers and develop hand-eye coordination. Here is an American Sign Language Song from Play-Along Songs Volume 2 called Rain Drops.
- Children's action songs supports listening and necessitates following directions. Children will focus and pay attention to adults who are teaching and presenting children’s action songs. Action songs require children to listen and follow directions in order to sing, move, take turns, develop new ideas, or perform other actions in a song.
- Children's action songs increase language skills, vocabulary, and word understanding. All children’s action songs require that children use their word understanding, learn new words and ideas, and at times manipulate words and rhymes. Children’s action songs are a fun musical way to teach and reinforce language, vocabulary and the understanding of words.
- Children's action songs support reading readiness. Children’s action songs help to develop a strong understanding of the letters of the alphabet, phonemic awareness, vocabulary, and the meanings of words. This recognition, understanding and increased knowledge of letters and words improves their readiness of all children. This children’s action song in from Play-Along Songs Volume 3 will demonstrate this. It is called I Like Letters.
- Children's action songs reinforce the learning of core educational concepts. Combining actions and songs to teach educational concepts (ABCs, numbers, colors, rhymes, animals, and vocabulary) is one of the most powerful ways for children to learn.
- Children's action songs cultivate an appreciation for music. Children love using their voices, bodies, and imagination as they sing-along, move-along, and creatively adapt songs. This engagement in music is laying the foundations for an enjoyment and appreciation for music in all its forms.
- Children's action songs foster self-esteem and self-confidence. Children can successfully sing-along, move-along and creatively adapt most of the action songs in Play-Along Songs children's music book collections. . Their successes at mastering age appropriate yet challenging, both physical and verbally, help foster personal self-esteem and a confidence in their personal abilities.
- Children's action songs encourage creativity, adaptability, and imagination. Play-Along Songs encourages all parents, teachers, early childhood professionals, and caregivers to learn to playfully adapt children’s action songs. Our instructions help to re-arrange songs, choose new actions, sounds, and ideas, create new rhymes, and write new verses. All of this creative manipulation of action songs by children helps lay the foundation for children to use their creative imagination in other areas of life and education.
- Children's action songs promote social skills and cooperation. When special time is set up for teaching, learning, creatively adapting, and performing children’s action songs, children learn many different social skills. They learn to be quiet, listen, follow directions, take turns, cooperate,, stop, sit, and much more. Here is a fun children's action song that helps children to follow directions. If is from Play-Along Songs Volume 1 called Jumping
- Children's action songs engage children and adults in bonding activities. Children love to interact with the adults around them. Children's action songs allows adults and children to play, sing, be silly, be creative, and just enjoy each other’s company in a fun and endearing way that fosters and strengthens bonding.
