Music is a powerful tool that helps many of us teach young kids all kinds of skills. You can teach colors, shapes, numbers, ABCs, social skills, language, motor skills, etc. all through music.
Whether you’re a parent, caregiver, therapist, or early childhood educator, incorporating simple songs, rhythms and movement can boost skills across multiple areas in a fun, low-pressure way.
Research shows that music engages the brain in unique ways. It lights up both hemispheres, stimulates multiple senses, and makes learning feel like play. Children often respond positively—even those who are hard to engage—because music is motivating, calming, and naturally repetitive.
I’ll go more into detail of how you can use music to target different developmental skills in the Preschool Music Tutorial, but here is a list of all the areas of development that you can use music to help improve skills.
That’s almost every area of development! Music is such a great tool whether you’re listening to music on your phone, playing musical instruments, singing directions, using music for transitions, or having a dance party.
I love music, and I love seeing how kids gravitate towards music too.
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This activity is great for kids at an FDL of: 1-6
The Functional Developmental Levels (FDL) are based on The PLAY Project and DIR/Floortime
This activity is great for kids primarily participating in stages: 1-6
The Stages of Play come from Parten’s Stages of Social Play.
This activity includes: visual, auditory, vestibular, proprioception
Our senses include more than the usual 5 senses. Some kids may seek certain types of sensory input and/or avoid other types.
This activity is good for targeting the following developmental skills: communication, cognitive, executive functioning, motor, social, adaptive
These are the main areas of child development addressed in the Early Intervention Tutorials
In this section, I will give you specific examples of what you can do in this activity to address specific areas of development.
