http://teachingmytoddlers.com/?p=292#more-292In my quest to find the best products available to help with pitch development, I recently came across a collection of CD’s called Tune Toddlers. According to their website:
“Tune Toddlers is a new Music Language Series created for little musicians newborn to 4 years old. Babies are naturally born with an incredible ability to learn language… especially the language of music.
Tune Toddlers learning CD’s (Baby Maestro, Baby Rocker, and Baby D.J.) are created to promote music listening skills while entertaining your child with playful rhythms and beats.
Music is traditionally taught as a secondary language. Tune Toddlers is designed to teach music as a primary language. Your baby can learn music as naturally as they learn other communication skills. It’s a fun and easy way to nurture your child’s musical ear.”
I had previously heard of music being referred to as a language in passing before. However, the above reference brought this comparison to a brand new light for me in the sense that it is subject to the same primary/secondary language acquisition differences depending on when it is learned. Through all of my experience and research, I know that babies and toddlers learn multiple languages naturally and effortlessly in the first three years, more so than at any other point during their lives. It makes perfect sense that the same would hold true for teaching music as a language. By giving children the right exposure in the first three years or so, music can be absorbed as a primary language as well. Beyond the toddler years, music can still be learned but it will be absorbed as a secondary language.
After reading through the website, I was thrilled to see that Tune Toddlers truly recognizes the importance of early years and infant brain stimulation and they even cited Glenn Doman on one of the pages. The website states that children are typically exposed to a limited selection of notes in music and that the music they are exposed to is often grossly out of tune, such as in most children’s toys or parent renditions of lullabies. The Tune Toddlers CD’s ensure that children are exposed to a full range of scales, arpeggios, and chords. These CD’s “tune their ears” musically without overlooking a single note, rather than leaving their music education to chance and hoping for what Doman would call a “happy accident.” While conversing with the creator of Tune Toddlers via email, he said
"The benefits of simple scales and arpeggios are lifelong. Especially full spectrum exposure as Tune Toddlers offers. We are mostly exposed to just a few simple major scales and a few keys. It's like teaching a child about the letters A, C, F, G, N, T, Q, and Z, and expecting them to write a complete sentence."
My first thought when I read this was "That makes a lot of sense." Looking at Tune Toddlers from an Early Learning perspective, if the brain is exposed to all of these full, rich, properly tuned sounds, kids are getting the “best case scenario” musical input. In other words, it’s a perfect model to learn from, kind of like a native speaker! Theoretically, this auditory exposure will further stimulate the areas of the brain that process music. I found it was easy to put on in the background and feel good that I was giving my kids purposeful musical exposure with absolutely zero effort required on my behalf, aside from pressing "play." According to an article on PianoFundamentals.com (which continues on to describe Doman style note naming):
“Perfect and relative pitch are best learned in very early youth….. The best way for toddlers to acquire perfect pitch is to be exposed almost daily to well tuned pianos from birth.”
When I initially listened to the Tune Toddlers CD’s, I wasn’t sure my kids would go for them after being exposed to much “busier” classical music selections. But now when they hear the opening notes of Baby DJ, they’ll get up and dance a bit because they enjoy the music. Lily will tiptoe across the room and say “Going upstairs” or “Going downstairs” depending on if the scale is getting higher or lower. (How stinkin’ cute is that?! I might be a bit biased though. :P ) In her Prezuki music class, the teacher has a stair-style glockenspiel with steps to visually demonstrate the pitch. Lily has clearly drawn an association in that respect.
As suggested by the Tune Toddlers creator, I started playing the Baby Maestro CD for Lily at bedtime or naptime. I wasn’t sure how it would affect her ability to fall asleep, but now she specifically requests that I turn it on for her. I think she finds it soothing and it seems to help her settle. At bedtime, I will just let it play on repeat for a few hours until it’s time for me to go to bed. I need to go buy another small boom box for my son’s room too so he can listen to the CD’s at night as well. Tweedlewink, one of the big names in Right Brain Education, suggests playing the TW DVD’s when your child is sleepy because it helps them absorb the information better via the Right Brain. So it makes sense to play Tune Toddlers at night when the kids are sleepy as well.
My only complaint? At the beginning of every CD a little introductory voice cheers “It’s Time for Tune Toddlers….Yaaaaaaaaaay!” before the music starts. I don’t mind it during the day but for night time use while the CD is set to repeat, I figure the cheering is not very soothing during sleep. Even so, it’s probably only 5 seconds long and not any louder than the rest of the CD. It never woke up my daughter like I thought it might.
You can hear some sample clips at
www.tunetoddlers.comAll in all, my kids love these CD’s and I love the musical exposure they provide. The music sounds so “clean” and easy to decipher for a young child. The tones are all rich and clear, the patterns are predictable while still being entertaining. Tune Toddlers will definitely be accompanying our children through the toddler years.
Note: Baby Maestro is the "standard" version of these CD's and Baby DJ & Baby Rocker were created later, offering different back beats and guitar sounds to teach rhythm and such. Each CD provides the same scales and "songs" and will work for pitch development.
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