Play some music, turn up the volume, and what happens? We get a feeling that we want to move! Whether it’s tapping our fingers on the steering wheel of the car, swaying slightly or tapping our foot, the instinct is there.
That’s even more true for children. They haven’t built up a sense of awareness of others, so they move like no-one’s watching. Dancing, jiggling their bottoms, clapping their hands, bopping their heads up and down, you name it!
We see this in our Wriggle and Rhyme music classes all the time. The children are so adorable in how they instinctively move to the music.
Which begs the question? What is it about music that “forces” us to move? Sure, there’s rhythm and an underlying beat which may feel compelling. But, what’s actually happening in our brains that gets us moving.
Here’s what Scientists have discovered …
What makes us want to move to music?
The answer is, the process of making music, argued by Molnar-Szakacs and Overy (2006). Conventional, non-digital music is made with physical vibrations, through various actions. For example, we move, the muscle of our vocal cords to sing, we shake our maracas, we hit our drum with a drumstick, etc.
These actions activate the pre-motor areas of our brain, specifically the MIRROR NEURON SYSTEM. Mirror neurons fire when we initiate certain actions AND when we see the behaviour performed by someone else.
So when we listen to music, our “audio-visual” mirror neurons are activated. They fire as if we are playing the instruments, and this general activation in pre-motor areas, triggers our desire to move and dance.
Musicians right down to our DNA
The existence of “audio-visual” mirror neurons indicates that, not only are we in-built dancers, we’re also in-built musicians.
Of course, music also stimulates our emotions. It has the ability to make us feel happy, sad, soulful, joyful, excited, scared etc. Getting up and moving, stimulates the oxygen supply to our brains and can also trigger the release of endorphins. This contributes to us feeling positive about the musical experience.
At Wriggle and Rhyme, we use music as a catalyst for learning and development. Some of the ways that we do this, are by encouraging rhythmic movement, actions in our singing and dramatic expression.
The rhythm’s gonna get you
We actively encourage the children to feel the underlying rhythms in our music and move in time to them. In the baby classes, this starts with the simple rhythm of a ticking clock.
Action songs
Often, the tendancy with little ones, is to think of adding actions to words, only in a way that reinforces the vocabulary of the song. This can be very effective – for example, in a song like “Head, shoulders, knees and toes”. By touching the head, when the word “head” is sung, there is an easy association made and the word is reinforced.
However, actions to songs can be much broader than that. By adding movement in the form of gentle exercise, we can also stimulate co-ordination, crossing the midline and so much more.
Express yourself
In our programmes for pre-schoolers, we give children the opportunity to express themselves in music – sometimes dramatically, sometimes emotionally. This kind of movement adds another layer of depth too.
Whatever movement you choose, there’s no denying it …
Music makes us move it, move it!
Whether it’s tapping a foot, swaying along to a rhythm or really getting our groove on, and dancing like no-one’s watching.
Discover just how much fun it is to learn to the beat! Come and join our musical adventure!
We have baby and toddler classes in MELKBOSSTRAND, RONDEBOSCH, CLAREMONT and MEADOWRIDGE.
Our pre-schools classes take place at many partner pre-schools across Cape Town as an extra-mural activity.
