LiveScience.com has posted an interesting article on how babies learn their first words. Recent research has shown that babies don't really listen to what their caretakers want them to listen to, but assign new words they hear to the objects they are interested in. For example, were a mother to say, "Look at the flower...the flower! What a pretty flower!" , but the baby's interest is captivated by a bird, the baby is likely to learn the novel word flower (we're talking comprehension, not speech) but might associate it with the bird.
Babies hear their caretakers, but assume that the word they hear is referring to what the baby is interested in, not necessarily what the caretaker is referring to. It's apparently not until around 18 months that young ones begin to learn to gauge the speaker's interest when learning new words.
The leader of the study said:
"Sometimes we fail to take notice of what our learners are doing and what they're interested in," she said. "We all learn best when things are meaningful."
That's really one of the challenges of early childhood education, and, I would add, children's music. Although we all learn best when things are meaningful, adults have the ability to hammer down and learn even when things aren't terribly meaningful to them. However, with children, if you can't find the interest point, good luck. And those interest points shift dramatically in periods of months, so teaching 3 year-olds is quite different than teaching 4 year-olds, and teaching 5 year-olds is yet another ballgame.
When working with young children, I think it's always important to start off by thinking about what activities, songs, etc. will be interesting to the children you will be working with, and then think what you can "teach" using those resources rather than deciding what you want to "teach" first and then trying to come up with resources and activities to teach with. It may sound like a minor distinction, but it makes all the difference in the world in how you approach your classes.
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