The new edition of 'The Child as Musician' celebrates the richness and diversity of the many different ways in which children can engage in and interact with music. It presents theory - both cutting edge and classic - in an accessible way for readers by surveying research concerned with the development and acquisition of musical skills.

A pioneering music educator reveals how music can supercharge early childhood development--and how parents and educators can harness its power. Since opening her famed Parisian conservatory over three decades ago, Joan Koenig has led a global movement to improve children's lives and minds with the transformative power of music. With a curriculum and philosophy drawn from cutting-edge science, L'Ecole Koenig has educated and empowered even its youngest students, from baby Max, whose coordination and communication grow as he wiggles and coos along to targeted songs and dance, to five-year-old Constance, who nourishes her empathy, creativity, and memory while practicing music from other cultures. In The Musical Child, Koenig shares stories from her classrooms, along with tips about how to use the latest research during the critical years when children are most sensitive to musical exposure--and most receptive to its benefits. A gift for parents, caregivers, musicians, and educators, The Musical Child reveals the multiple ways music can help children thrive--and how, in the twenty-first century, its practice is more vital than ever.

Children are inherently musical. They respond to music and learn through music. Music expresses children's identity and heritage, teaches them to belong to a culture, and develops their cognitive well-being and inner self worth. As professional instructors, childcare workers, or students looking forward to a career working with children, we should continuously search for ways to tap into children's natural reservoir of enthusiasm for singing, moving and experimenting with instruments. But how, you might ask? What music is appropriate for the children I'm working with? How can music help inspire a well-rounded child? How do I reach and teach children musically? Most importantly perhaps, how can I incorporate music into a curriculum that marginalizes the arts?This book explores a holistic, artistic, and integrated approach to understanding the developmental connections between music and children. This book guides professionals to work through music, harnessing the processes that underlie music learning, and outlining developmentally appropriate methods to understand the role of music in children's lives through play, games, creativity, and movement. Additionally, the book explores ways of applying music-making to benefit the whole child, i.e., socially, emotionally, physically, cognitively, and linguistically.

Spinning the Child examines music for children on records, radio and television by assessing how ideals of entertainment, education, ‘the child’ and ‘the family’ have been communicated through folk music, the BBC’s children’s radio broadcasting, the children’s songs of Woody Guthrie, Sesame Street, The Muppet Show and Bagpuss, the contemporary children’s music industry and other case studies. The book provides the first sustained critical overview of recorded music for children, its production and dissemination. The music, lyrics and sonics of hundreds of recorded songs are analysed with reference to their specific social, historical and technological contexts. The chapters expose the attitudes, morals and desires that adults have communicated both to and about the child through the music that has been created and compiled for children. The musical representations of age, race, class and gender reveal how recordings have both reflected and shaped transformations in discourses of childhood. This book is recommended for scholars in the sociology of childhood, the sociology of music, ethnomusicology, music education, popular musicology, children’s media and related fields. Spinning the Child’s emphasis on the analysis of musical, lyrical and sonic texts in specific contexts suggests its value as both a teaching and research resource.

Hush, Child! Can’t You Hear the Music? is a remarkable collection of black folktales and photographs from rural Georgia. During the 1930s and 1940s Rose Thompson worked as a home supervisor with the Farm Security Administration in middle Georgia. While she worked with farmers and their wives--teaching them to put up preserves, make cotton mattresses, and build chick brooders--she listened to the stories they told. Reading Hush, Child! Can’t You Hear the Music? is like spending an afternoon reminiscing on the front porch. The book is illustrated with photographs taken by Thompson and WPA photographer Jack Delano.

I acknowledge a deep debt of gratitude to my coeditors: my wife Irene, and my friend and colleague Tom Draper. They have worked with diligence and insight to bring this work to completion. They have delegated the task of writing the Preface to me. As the scientific study of human development matures it is not only natural, but it is necessary to reach beyond understanding the ways humans develop capacities, to study the ways emerging capacities fit into the larger sphere of human undertakings. Music is one of the most significant of those endeavors. As I attend the several piano competitions that are on my agenda each year, and see children seated at the keyboard drawing forth the magnificent sounds of Bach, Chopin, and Ravel, I am always a little awed. Surely, it seems to me, the piano* is among the best of man's creations; the creative energies of great composers are among mankind's greatest expressions; and encouraging children to associate themselves seriously with both instrument and composer can be one of the great blessings to their young lives and, by association, to the larger society. Music touches the entire range of our lifespan on a daily basis. Involving chil dren with music and music training has high market, and common sense, validity. Parents understand intuitively that children will benefit, and their lives will be enriched, if they are influenced by music and music training.

Shows how parents can introduce unborn and newborn babies to music as part of their environment. Explains how to integrate music with play, exploration, learning and socialisation. Includes activities, musical games and songs to sing.