The Staying Power of Kindermusik

Family Kindermusik Night 12/2/06

As we celebrate and begin to wrap up our fall semester of Village Dream Pillow, Our Time Milk & Cookies, Imagine That! Hello Weather, and Family Time Our Kind of Day, please consider yet another reason why you should continue your child's Kindermusik experience at Musikandmotion in spring 2007!

The following experiment was lead by Adam Winsler, Ph.D, and Lesley Ducenne at George Mason University on the effects of repeated vs. sporadic participation in Kindermusik on children ages 3-5. Here's what the researchers found:

The longer you stay in Kindermusik, the better.

· Children currently enrolled in Kindermusik showed higher levels of self-control than those never enrolled and those previously enrolled. …This suggests that in order for children to reap the benefit of increased self-control as a result of Kindermusik participation, it is important to have repeated and recent Kindermusik experiences and remain enrolled in the program.

· Four-year-old children who had been exposed to Kindermusik for longer periods of time are better off in terms of self-control—namely a child’s ability to plan, guide, and control their own behavior—than similar children with less Kindermusik history.

· These experiences, stop-go, high-low, fast-slow, short-long, and loud-soft, whereby children’s motor behavior is guided by the music, appear to be good exercise for young children’s emerging self-regulatory skills.

Editor’s note:

Study results were made available to Kindermusik in May, 2005. The study was conducted by Adam Winsler Ph.D and graduate student Lesley Ducenne in the Department of Psychology at George Mason University.

Kudos to Lori Burhart (you can read her full article) and Beth Frook (whose class was the subject of the study) for sharing the information with your fellow Kindermusik educators and families!