Musical Community: Families Engaging in Early Childhood Music Program

Music is a powerful means for communication. It is eminent in a non-verbal setting such as parents’ interactions with babies and infants. For older children, early childhood music education is generally taking place in formal settings such as day-care centers, kindergartens and pre-schools. All are settings in which parents are not present. In the last three decades, in addition to the formal settings, a large number of early childhood music programs have flourished around the world. These private community programs were developed for parents, caregivers and infants in their early years, sometimes after or instead of school attendance. One of the early childhood family music programs in Israel is “Little- Tone” which has been operating since 2002. It is located in several cities and has established itself as the largest early childhood family music program in Israel.

The aim of the program is to provide parents and children an opportunity to engage in collaborative musical- making and to develop their musical skills, relationships and comMUSICation (the author’s definition for musical communication).

The presentation will focus on the content, structure and musical practices developed for the program to emphasize musical communication between caregivers and their children. The role of parents in modeling, the use of music play in the family’s daily lives and the role of music in the child’s health and well - being. Parents’ musical experiences and the role of parents in a child’s musical development are investigated and discussed. Assessment for the success of the program and the musical practices makes use of observation of children`s progress as well parental reporting regarding toddlers` musical and general intellectual development. In addition, parents’ personal report on their self experiences will be investigated and discussed. Implications and recommendations for future development of the program will be suggested.