Sing, Sing a Song!
Language skills are developed by more than just talking, listening, and reading. Singing to and with your child helps develop speech and language skills by combining repetition, rhythm, rhyme and motion in one place.
Who cares if your singing voice sounds like your talking voice? It’s okay. Your voice will still be a familiar friend to your child.
Let’s take a look at the song “Five Little Monkeys” to see how the repetition, rhythm, rhyme and motion of the song support language development.
Five little monkeys jumping on the bed
One fell off and bumped his head.
Mama called the doctor and the doctor said,
“No more monkeys jumping on the bed!”
Repetition
Many children’s songs have repeating phrases like EIEIO, Hi ho the derry-o, and Knick knack paddy whack give your dog a bone. Hearing the same words many times throughout the song offer your child multiple times to sing and learn it as they catch on to the tune. The repetition helps make the song memorable and gives it earworminess.
With our monkeys, each time this song is sung, fewer monkeys are jumping on the bed. It starts with five, then “Four little monkeys jumping on the bed…” then “Three little monkeys jumping on the bed…” until there are no more monkeys jumping on the bed. Each time the song is sung, only one word changes, giving a child the chance to learn all of the words.
Rhythm
Children’s songs have rhythms that provide a predictable beat. Simply clapping or tapping your foot can usually help you figure out the beat of a song. This beat helps your child anticipate what kind word to expect next.
Five little monkeys jumping on the trampoline
Or
Five little monkeys jumping on the bouncy ball
would still work and still make sense, but these words just don’t have the same flow as “bed.”
Rhyme
Like rhythm, rhyming words in a song help a child predict what word will come next. Even if they don’t know all the words, rhyming and rhythm can help a child figure out if the word ‘seems right.’
Five Little Monkeys jumping on the bed
One fell off and bumped his elbow.
Nah.
Five Little Monkeys jumping on the bed
One fell off and bumped his head.
Mama called the doctor and the doctor said,
“No more monkeys jumping on the bed!”
Motion
Who can hear Queen’s “We Will Rock You” without the overwhelming feeling to STOMP-STOMP-CLAP, STOMP-STOMP-CLAP? Even if you don’t know the words to that song, when you hear it at a sports venue, you just know to STOMP-STOMP-CLAP, STOMP-STOMP-CLAP. That’s how motion can be so integral to a song.
With our monkeys, many people turn one palm up to represent the bed and place the heel of their other hand in an up and down motion showing how many monkeys are jumping. Children are able to hear the song, ‘see’ the song with the hand motions and move to the song by making the hand motions. With the ‘monkey hand,’ children learn counting because they can see the number of monkeys of jumping and learn to make that number on their hand
When “Mama calls the doctor,” the hand motions are putting a hand telephone to your ear as if you’re on the phone. It’s a bit old school, but the other hand can be used to dial the telephone, though children may not know what a rotary phone is.
The doctor tells us, “No more monkeys jumping on the bed” at the end of the song. When dispensing this advice, wagging your finger and shaking your head reinforce the doctor’s wisdom. Through these motions, a child will begin to associate finger wagging and head shaking with things that aren’t supposed to be done.
Singing songs are a fun way to spend time, belt out a few tunes, and bust out some moves while developing your child’s language skills. Whether it’s the about the twinkling star, the farmer, the bus or the monkeys, go ahead and sing, sing a song!
Jann Fujimoto, MS CCC-SLP is a speech-language pathologist and owner of SpeechWorks LLC. As Lake Country’s mobile speech therapy practice, SpeechWorks helps children become confident communicators and empowers parents to be their child’s speech-language advocate. Reach her at 262-490-5653.