The Beat Goes On

Youngsters listen to everything around them. Hearing is one of the first senses to come alive in the womb, and the mother's steady, constant heartbeat is a sound that the child learns well. After birth, recordings of a heartbeat are often used for the calming effect the sound has on babies.

From birth onward, a child's auditory perception sharpens and all kinds of interesting sounds are absorbed, from the soft sounds of rustling leaves, bed sheets and purring kittens to the exciting, loud sounds of fireworks on the 4th of July.

Children are very perceptive to spoken languages at a very young age, and studies have shown that listening to foreign languages at an early age can help them learn the unusual sounds of that language later in life. The music of a culture is usually related to its spoken language in many ways. Children, like sponges, soak up any musical sounds they hear and learn about them.

One thing that distinguishes music from most of the other sounds they hear is the beat, the element of music which you feel when you're tapping your toes or clapping along with a song. The steady pulse of music is one of the first things a child can learn, and it can be done at a very early age.

There are many ways to experience the beat with your child. I've seen Moms and Dads holding babies and rocking them back and forth with the beat while listening to music - this simple activity teaches the baby a relationship between music and movement. Parents can sing or chant nursery rhymes with their babies and bounce them on their knee or hold their hands and move to the pulse of the music.

The beat can be experienced any time music is present. Children will imitate clapping hands, patting knees, tapping feet - anything that makes a little noise. While riding in the car, our kids used to love patting their hands on their car seat, keeping the beat while music was playing.

There is a difference between the beat and rhythm. The words of a song are sung in rhythm, while the beat is very steady and always pulsing. For example, "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" has syllables that fall on the beat, but the words pause at the end of each phrase while the beat goes on. In "The Farmer in the Dell," the beat falls on "far-," "in" and "dell." If a song has words, children usually try to clap on each syllable, and this usually is not the beat. When a child can sing in rhythm and clap on the beat at the same time, you can tell that a new level of accomplishment has been achieved.

To do rhythm at home, it is not necessary to go out and buy any equipment, although there are many percussion instruments available which have very interesting sounds. It is fun to improvise drums with objects found around the house. Empty Pringles cans work very well, as do metal cans that have plastic lids. The clear plastic boxes with reclosable lids often used in foodservice also make great drums. Children learn to experiment with all the different sounds these cans can make, depending on where you strike them (the top, bottom, sides or corners all sound different) and what you strike them with (pencil erasers, spoons, fingers, toothpicks).

Playing rhythms with a child is really fun, and it doesn't take a lot of musical talent. Happy drumming!