In my experience of working with children as young as 6 months, I have yet to come across a child who is not able to play an instrument to the beat of a song, even if it is for only 2-4 beats. The drumbeat is the human way of imitating the heartbeat. Remember that a mother s heartbeat is what a baby has heard and felt for the first nine months while in the womb. We never lose our response to this comforting sound. Even Alzheimer s patients will respond to the beat of a drum when nothing else will reach them.
Children love to move to the beat of a drum.
You can use different rhythms to indicate how to move. Play fast and children can run. Play very slow steady beats for big steps, softly for tiptoeing, silence for stopping, or make up your own. You can do the drumming and have your child do the movement or better yet reverse it. Children don t have a lot of opportunities to be in control.