"The importance of early
childhood education, particularly in music, has been
overlooked throughout history. Fortunately, today
educators – as well as the community at large –
recognize more and more the value of
pre-kindergarten guidance and instruction. Early
childhood music education has been in the forefront
of this timely movement.
Perhaps the best way to
describe the crucial significance of the education
of youngsters is to turn to those who are engaged in
relevant research. Numerous neurologists,
pediatricians, biologists, and psychologists
associated with universities and research institutes
have come to believe that there are critical periods
associated with surges of neurological connections
and synapses that take place prenatally and during
early childhood.
The research seems to indicate that if a very
young child has no opportunity to develop a music
listening vocabulary, the cells that would have been
used to establish that hearing sense will at best be
directed to another sense, perhaps the visual, and
the visual sense will be strengthened at the expense
of the aural sense. No amount of compensatory
education at a later time will be able to completely
offset the handicap.
Informal and formal guidance and instruction in
music at an early age can serve the child throughout
his or her entire adult life. The goal is not to
make the child a professional musician. Should that
happen, all well and good. What is perhaps even more
important is that children will be prepared to feel
comfortable with music, when both listening and
performing, as they pursue their normal daily lives
and enjoy life to the fullest. As adults, in
addition to being at ease with music, they may even
desire and be capable of guiding their own children
in making music."
- Edwin E. Gordon,
Distinguished Professor in Residence at the
University of South Carolina, Professor of Research
in Music Education at Temple University in
Philadelphia, and known throughout the world as a
preeminent researcher, teacher, author, editor and
lecturer in the field of music education.
Music Together® is an
innovative,
research-based music and movement
program that assists parents in sharing fun,accessible musical activities with
their
children from birth to four years old.
Music Together is the pioneer program in
developmental, research-based early childhood music
education.
From the Center for Music and Young Children in
Princeton, N.J., the program was developed in the
80's by leading researcher and renowned child
development expert Dr. Lili Levinowitz and
composer/educator Ken Guilmartin.
The four basic principles of Music Together
1. ALL Children are Musical.
2. ALL Children can learn to
sing in tune and keep a beat.
3. The participation and modeling of parents
and care givers is essential to a
child's musical growth.
4. Young children's musical growth thrives best
in a playful, musically rich, developmentally
appropriate setting, free of the
pressure to perform.
1. All Children are Musical
Music Together philosophy is
developed around some of Dr Edwin Gordon's research,
which demonstrates that all children are musical,
and that they are most open to musical learning
during their first five years of life.
Gordon believes that children whose musicality is
not developed during those years will never be able
to make up for the loss of that opportunity to
develop their native capacity for musical expression
and appreciation.
In our culture we tend to think that
only a select few are musical.
However research shows that musical aptitude is
distributed in a bell curve just like any other
aptitude. In fact 84% of the population is born with
enough music aptitude to play in a symphony.
So both you and your child have musical
talent, it may be dormant and just waiting to be
found, but it's there!
2. All Children can learn to sing in
tune and keep a beat.
This sounds like such a simple
concept, but if you took a survey of your neighbors,
you may very well find that few of them can sing on
tune without an accompaniment, or perhaps even with.
This is so unfortunate and so unnecessary,
as we all have the aptitude to develop these
abilities.
FACT: If your child experiences interesting
music classes,
and experiments with that music at home,
he/she will be more likely to develop this ability
by age 3 or 4!
If your child has rich musical experiences before
the age of five, he is likely to develop these
skills. Sadly many children never do, because the
activities of actually making music in families has
become less important and relegated to the
professionals.
3. The participation and modeling
of parents
is essential to a child's musical growth.
YOU are your child's most important
music teacher!
A teacher can teach content and skills,
but only you can teach the joy of enjoying music!
This is simply because you are their number one role
model right now.
What you do - they want to copy!
Music Together classes can help you figure out
how to do this. Just enjoy it and join in.
4. Young Children's musical growth occurs best
in a playful, musically rich, and
developmentally appropriate setting.
Children learn through play and
experimenting.
Music Together classes offer a setting that is
playful, and interactive.
There is not pressure to perform or do things a
certain way.
You will experience music making, as opposed to
learning about it.
Each individual is invited to participate freely at
their own comfort level.
The activities are developed at several levels of
difficulty, so there is something for every level of
development - even yours!
The creators...
Kenneth K. Guilmartin conceived and led the
development of the innovative Music Together program
for the Center for Music and Young Children, which
he founded in 1985. He has composed numerous scores
for off-Broadway and regional theater productions
and is a popular presenter at early childhood and
music educator conferences. He has created music
programs and conducted teacher trainings for early
childhood centers nationwide. A graduate of
Swarthmore College, he studied composition and
pedagogy at the Manhattan School of Music and is
certified in Dalcroze Eurhythmics by the Manhattan
Dalcroze Institute.
Lili M. Levinowitz, Ph.D., is Professor of Music
Education at Rowan University. She is a national
authority on early childhood music and is actively
involved in teaching very young children as well as
graduate students. Her articles appear frequently in
professional journals and popular magazines. She
received her Ph.D. from Temple University where she
was director of the Children’s Music Development
Program