Learning academic facts through music. Opinions please.

[BlessedMom]

Please share your thoughts and/or experiences with teaching children math fact, phonics rules, history facts, etc.......through the use of music or catchy tunes.

 

Pros and cons please.

[Pster]

I don't how I viewed it before we experienced it... but this year, being in CC (Classical Conversations) much of what the girls are learning can be memorized to music or rhyme. They have learned a LOT of facts because it is easier to remember them when they are sung. It may not work for all - but for my girls it has certainly helped. They have learned mostly history and math facts. I also have a US geography states / capitals cd but I haven't broken that out yet. I know that I can remember catchy tunes for facts I learned when I was little so... there has to be something to it.

 

It is the grammar stage right? Absorption of facts.... ;o)

 

hth!

[Mama Anna]

Here we use a lot of rhythms and some songs. FLL lists usually do well in rhythms - then you can practice them with handjive, while "dancing" - whatever floats the kid's boat. Usually she just needs the first word in the list to head off. Now, can she remember them without the rhythm? Mostly, she can.

 

The only con I can think of would be if the songs/rhythms are such a necessary crutch that a kid can't do without them.

 

HTH!

 

Mama Anna

[NoPlaceLikeHome]

I have used many DVDs from the Rock N Learn series as a supplement. I used the ones on addition, subtraction, telling time, money, spanish, phonics, and multiplication:)

 

 

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_0_12?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=rock+n+learn&sprefix=rock+n+learn

 

 

My ds loved these and I think they helped, but I only used them as a supplement. Your library may have them or maybe Netflix.

[MeganW]

I have heard that it can become a real crutch, and facts can't be recalled without the music. BUT, my kids really struggle to memorize. So we learn everything originally to music (which is painless for them), then kind of go to a chant, then to just saying it.

[duckens]

My kids are much younger than most here (3yo), but we sing the days of the week and months of the year.

 

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Days of the week is sung to the Addams Family tune:

 

Days of the week *snap snap*

Days of the week *snap snap*

Days of the week, days of the week, days of the week *snap snap*

 

There's Sunday and there's Monday,

There's Tuesday and there's Wednesday,

There's Thursday and there's Friday,

And then there's Saturday!

 

(While repeating the days of the week, we start with our arms in the air, and for each day, we move down toward the floor a little.)

 

---------------------------------------

 

Months of the Year, I wrote myself. We sing it to "Ride a Cock Horse":

 

January, February, March, April, May,

June, July, August, September,

October, November,

December's the end!

Sing it again as fast as you can!!!

 

(Thank you very much. I'll be available to sign autographs later!)

 

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I've also used this for Geography with the kids I nannied before dd was born. We did the world geography choice.

 

http://www.audiomemory.com/geography.php

 

It was quite effective for the grade school children with whom I worked (Grades 1st-4th).

 

Before investing $$$, I would check how accurate the maps/songs are since borders change all of the time.

 

Laura in Iowa

[IsabelC]

I have also taught my kids the days and months by singing them. I'm not majorly into memory work at the point, but I'd probably do more with songs. I'd imagine it's like most other techniques: works better on some people than others. Some children might find that some kind of pictorial or diagrammatic representation is easier to recall.

[Dina in Oklahoma]

Hello ~

 

We would not be half as far in geography, math or grammar without music! I highly recommend the Troxel line. I would encourage you to purchase something that has the words printed out to use until the songs have been learned. We had trouble with Veritas Press CDs because we couldn't make out some of the words to the songs. Also, the more multisensory, the better the material is retained.

 

HTH,

 

Dina :001_smile:

[Orthodox6]

Try it and see how your children like it (or not). Best suggestion I can muster.

 

I never gave my children the opportunity to discover whether or not they liked learning via "facts set to music". Anything of the type I heard, drove me up the wall instantly. Can't abide this approach one bit. Undoubtedly it was unfair not to let my children make up their own minds.

[Alphabetika]

I'm sure I'm not the only one here who can STILL sing the Planet song from Geography Songs even though we haven't used it in 8 years. "Sun, Mercury, Venus, Earth...." Sing it with me, ladies! :lol:

[Tracy]

For a child who loves music, I think it is very important. My dd was only three when we got her a Schoolhouse Rock CD, which spurred questions about kings and queens, which led to a study of US History and studies of other countries that have monarchies and some that still do. She will learn anything if it is set to music and run with it in a unit study sort of way. My ds, however, really couldn't care less about music. As a toddler, he would cry every time I tried to sing to him, and cry even more if I tried to add motions and movement. Totally depends on the kid.

[Charles Wallace]

Please share your thoughts and/or experiences with teaching children math fact, phonics rules, history facts, etc.......through the use of music or catchy tunes.

 

Pros and cons please.

 

LOVE IT.

 

Seriously, especially when my dd was younger, it was absolutely a help to essentially memorize all of the songs from Schoolhouse Rock -- they've helped againandagainandagain. Not too long ago, my dd and I were diagramming a sentence and she didn't know where a particular phrase went, so we went through the list of the parts of speech and their definitions from Schoolhouse Rock to figure it out.

 

We also set a number of concepts to music or chants ourselves, like "Kingdom, phylum, class and order..." to "Yankee Doodle." For rote memorization, it really should be fun, and I think that bringing in chants, songs, rhymes, etc. not only makes it fun (a secondary or tertiary concern) but enables the learning to be retained and recalled effectively and accurately (a primary concern).

 

Because the song or rhyme patterns the information, it also makes the learner aware when s/he is missing information, or when the information needs to be continued or completed. The song or rhyme helps the learner retain the information for a long time because it's addressing at least two modes of thinking (verbal/aural and kinesthetic if you dance around like a crayzee fool, which we have been known to do).

 

I'm eager to hear what others have to say.

[Charles Wallace]

I have heard that it can become a real crutch, and facts can't be recalled without the music. BUT, my kids really struggle to memorize. So we learn everything originally to music (which is painless for them), then kind of go to a chant, then to just saying it.

 

 

Yeah, but to be honest, Megan, I'm not sure why this is really even an issue. Seriously, if I asked you right now to recite the alphabet, my guess is that you'd be cranking up the "Twinkle, Twinkle" tune in your head and singing "a-b-c-d-e-f-g..." So would I, by the way!! I'm not sure what's wrong with linking the music to the facts. It's not like you and I don't know the alphabet!

[Paintedlady]

We've memorized the states using the song "Fifty Nifty United States" and also Bible verses for Awana. I don't really see a downside.

[MeganW]

Yeah, but to be honest, Megan, I'm not sure why this is really even an issue. Seriously, if I asked you right now to recite the alphabet, my guess is that you'd be cranking up the "Twinkle, Twinkle" tune in your head and singing "a-b-c-d-e-f-g..." So would I, by the way!! I'm not sure what's wrong with linking the music to the facts. It's not like you and I don't know the alphabet!

 

At the beginning of this school year, we were learning our AWANA verses to music. But the tunes are not super-common, and if the child couldn't think of the tune at the moment, they weren't able to remember the verse on cue.

[TechWife]

No problem here. My son still remembers the grammar he learned in cs with the Shurley grammar jingles. For that matter, so do I!

[Penelope]

I don't see a problem with it, with the exception of math facts. I'm really glad I don't have to stop and think of a song for my multiplication tables. I think it's more beneficial to know those cold by just associating the numbers with another number. Maybe I'd try songs if after a long time trying, nothing else worked.

[Dmmetler]

My brother was a 2x Citizen Bee national finalist, and one year one of the written questions in the final round was on the preamble to the constitution. He said you could tell whenever any of the kids got to that question, because inevitably, they'd start humming the song from "Schoolhouse rock"-and these were the top 15 kids in history/geography/civics/government in the USA/DODS at the time!

 

It works, especially for lists of information that don't have much other commonality or pattern.

 

My one caveat (and I don't think anyone on this board does this, I hope!) is that this is NOT music instruction and should not be considered as such. I have been in the position, as a ps music teacher, of having to fight to keep the youngest students on my schedule after the school adopted "Sing, Spell, Read and Write", because the administrator figured that since the kids were singing in reading, that could count as their music class time.