3rd Annual Infant/Toddler Professional Development Seminar
“Early Experiences Matter”
Friday, October 25, 2019 from 8:00 am – 4:00 pm
Thank You to the generous support of the BRINDLE Foundation
Breakout Session 3 Workshop 1 (2:00-3:15pm)
Language & Music through Play:
Understanding interrelationships between music and language through play.
Engaging in movement and rhythm is foundational in language development.
Presenter: Frances Vitali, PhD, University of New Mexico and San Juan College
Researcher and theorist Bob Fagen said that "play is a creative force in evolution and development” (p. 147). Since children’s “natural resource is play” as Koste (1995, p. xx) reminds us adults, we can use their play strengths in building a foundation for their eventual reading and writing skills. You can play with language through rhythm, rhyme, storytelling, and movement since children like to move and naturally like to play with words and images. Movement is natural to children ever since they felt the beating of their mother’s heart during their gestation. In the beginning, there was rhythm!. Rhythm, movement and poetry are synonymous so incorporating moving and walking to steady beats can physically relate to the flow of words. In playing with oral (speaking) and aural (listening) language of words through poetry, chants and rhymes, and movement, children build their listening and speaking vocabularies. Opportunities for oral and aural language of poetry, rhymes and chants reinforce and support language development, whereby creating a repertoire of their reading and writing literacies.
Our Language and Music through Play session will explore these principles in animated hands-on fashion. Participants will leave with handouts of chants, songs, rhymes available on a website for future reference beyond the workshop.
Activities