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The Importance of Music and Movements Towards Early Childhood Development

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Issue :The Importance of Music and Movement and How Much it Contributes to the Early Childhood Development

This is a writing on the issue of the importance of music and how it contributes towards the early childhood development. Reading five and more articles and journals on this issue, I have to agree that music and movements contributes to the child’s total development: psychomotor, perceptual, affective, cognitive, social, cultural and aesthetic. According to Harvard psychologist Howard Gardner (1983), music intelligence is equal in importance to logical - mathematical intelligence, linguistic intelligence, spatial intelligence, bodily - kinesthetic intelligence, interpersonal intelligence, and intrapersonal intelligence.
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To go along in the mission of encouraging music in children, teachers must be creative enough to plan activities that will attract the children to participate and enjoy. Action songs like; You Put Your Right Hands In, Making Melodies In My Heart, I’m a Little Teapot, Humpty Dumpty, Saya Seekor Gajah, P. Ramlee songs like, Tanya Sama Pokok, Nenek Si Bongkok Tiga and etc is way to encourage children to involve actively in musical games and play, besides developing children’s motor skills, hand-eye coordination as well as coordination of body parts. Besides songs and rhymes, teachers can also use fast or slow rhythmic music tunes and encourage the kinesthetic learners, who find it easier to learn through actions than via words alone. To make the session more interesting, teacher can think of some props like, scarf, pong-pong, hula hoop, musical instruments, and so on. While singing and teaching songs in the playground, teachers are encouraged to model loud and joyful singing and dancing with the children. Failure to develop competence in fundamental skills of movement may result in a poor body image(Green, 2001).
Music in Language Development. Music can definitely foster the language development in children. First of all in a multi-cultural society like Malaysia, we are rich with multi languages and norms. Teacher must help the children to come to sense that
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