What do we mean by "Approaches to Learning"?

As a parent, you want to do everything you can to support your children's healthy development and ensure that they are ready for formal education when the time comes. You've probably heard of the five main domains of early childhood development: cognitive, physical, language, social, and emotional. During the first few years of life, children experience rapid growth in each of these areas. This development is integral to what is called "school readiness": possessing the skills, knowledge, and attitudes necessary to successfully engage in learning when entering kindergarten.

Did you also know there is another developmental area that is equally—if not more—important to school readiness? It's called Approaches to Learning (ATL), and it encompasses not what children learn, but how they learn. This includes:

• attitudes, habits, and dispositions toward learning
• learning styles
• motivation, curiosity, and eagerness to learn
• openness to exploring and experimenting, to taking on a challenge, persisting through a task, or to trying something new
• a child's imaginative capacity and self-confidence

Research has shown that children who approach learning in more positive and adaptive ways in kindergarten show higher rates of academic growth throughout their education. So, helping your child develop these skills early on is important.

With Music Together, your child naturally builds these important learning dispositions, both during class and when you play with the music at home. For example, asking children to repeat rhythm or tonal patterns on their own helps them develop the ability to take on a challenge. Opportunities to invent movements or come up with new words to songs encourage imaginative capacity. Instrument-play and free-movement experiences promote the disposition to explore and experiment. Children are motivated to learn when they engage in Music Together's playful, enjoyable, and participatory music-making activities.