Early Childhood Early Childhood Guidance and Instruction Preparatory Audiation Acculturation Imitation Assimilation One's potential to learn is never greater than at the moment of birth. The early years of life are crucial for establishing a foundation for lifelong music development. A child's musical experiences from birth to age five have a particularly profound impact on the extent to which she will be able to understand, appreciate, and achieve in music as an adult. Children must be exposed to a rich variety of music during these years in order to develop the necessary readiness for formal music learning when they are older.
Children learn music in much the same way they learn a language.
After listening to the sounds of her native language for some months, a child goes through a stage of language babble, in which she experiments with speech sounds that do not make sense to adult listeners. Children also go through stages of music babble , in which they make sounds that typically do not make musical sense to adults. In tonal babble the child sings in a speaking voice quality. In rhythm babble she moves erratically, without consistent tempo or discernible meter. Children who have not yet emerged from music babble do not benefit from formal music instruction.