Music is Powerful: Ways to Harness the Power in Your Homeschool
[Today we have a guest post from Martha Reineke of FreeSchoolLinks.]
Music is Powerful: Ways to Harness the Power in Your Homeschool
Have you ever laid in a hammock, or on a towel next to the ocean, listening to the sound of the waves lapping at the shore? There is just something about the rhythmic crash of the waves that lulls you into a state of relaxation. You cannot long rest near the shoreline without feeling the effects of the waves.
What if there were a way to have the effects of such a location, without having to travel long distances to the ocean? Similar to the lapping waves, is the beat of a drum, or the sway of a soothing melody. Music is powerful.
Music Therapy
We’ve often heard the idiom, “Music soothes the savage beast”, and researchers from Harvard have discovered a new type of therapy that gives life to the old saying. Music is powerful enough to calm even the most explosive of emotions and help your body heal during times of physical injury and sickness. Therapists discovered that people who listened to music had less anxiety during procedures, healed faster than others post procedure, and even had less pain during the healing process than those who went without music. Music can impact the neurons in the patients’ brains and cause the patients to feel relaxed and at ease, generating an atmosphere more conducive to healing.
Music as an Educational Aide
Music isn’t just a tool for physical and emotional therapy, however. Music, and learning to play an instrument have been directly linked to higher grades, improved cognitive function and increased concentration levels. Scientists at John’s Hopkins College have experimented with music and shown that educators who employ music in their classrooms have seen an improvement in their students’ concentration, focus, and even their memory. It can even set the mood for your school room and ease anxieties or stress about certain subjects. They have shown music to be an educational aide that has no comparative rival. Music is powerful.
Learning a Musical Instrument
Going even further, there is a very direct connection between your brain function, and learning a musical instrument. Parents who don’t just stop at playing music in the classroom, but take the next step and have their child learn to play a musical instrument, enhance the effects of music in their child’s life exponentially. A study from Boston’s Children’s Hospital showed that musical training can improve blood flow in the left hemisphere of the brain. It also improves language, and mathematical abilities. They hypothesize that musical training literally engages a part of the brain known for Executive functions, or higher brain functions. Music can train your child’s brain at a very early age, empowering them towards a higher IQ. Subjects who had been trained in music had an enhance ability to improve use of sensory information. Music even helped change the brain circuitry in those trained.
Music is Powerful
Music isn’t just for enjoyment. It is a tool that we as parents can use in our home classrooms to mold and shape the very neurons of our children’s brains. We have another weapon in our arsenal that we can use in education, and very few parents even know its power. What parent wouldn’t want to take advantage of every single opportunity to see their child excel? To teach your child the practice of playing an instrument, is to empower them to rise above their peers in cognitive function, and be everything they can be. It is a propulsion of the most powerful kind towards success in life. Music is powerful.
Resources at FreeSchoolLinks
You can find resources to help your children learn a musical instrument and read music if you visit my blog. Click on “Electives” and then click on “Music”. I hope you enjoy the quality resources that are all free of charge.
Martha Reineke is a former music educator in western Ohio, having taught
choir, music theory, band, and private lessons. Having 14 years
experience home schooling her children, her passion is to instill a
passion in others for music. Find some excellent free music resources
at. www.freeschoollinks.wordpress.
