rhyme using their right hand and the baby’s left hand, since they are facing each other. Crossing the midline would mean to repeat the activity and the caregiver would use their right hand while performing the rhyme on the baby’s right hand.
For older students, crossing the midline would mean having the students keep the steady beat while using their right hand to tap their left knee, and then using their left hand to tap their right knee. Movements can also include, but are not limited to, toe touches with right hand to left foot and vice versa, shoulder taps with the left hand tap- ping the right shoulder and vice versa, and so much more.
These activities are important in helping a child’s brain to communicate across their corpus callosum. This communication is essential for allowing the two hemi- spheres to talk to each other. This is vital for higher level skills such as reading and writing. If classes such as music and PE are concentrating on crossing the midline activi- ties, then students have a better chance to develop these higher level skills.
Music and the brain have a close partnership. In Sally
Goddard Blythe’s book The Well Balanced Child, she describes music as the child’s second language. The first language is movement. Movement then moves into lan- guage as the baby discovers their surroundings. Before a child can speak, they babble with sounds that have tones, pitches, rhythms, and inflections. This all builds up to them learning to speak the language that is being spoken to them at home, and later on in life, to read and write.
**** Music uses the same neural circuits as articulating
speech. The rhythm, tones, pauses, and words of music uses the same neural circuits for language. When music is included in a school’s curriculum at the earliest of ages, then a child is not only becoming musically inclined, but they are being set up to have a better chance for com- municating, developing social emotional learning, audi- tory processing, and eventually, reading and writing skills. This, in turn, sets students up to open their minds for higher learning skills that they will experience throughout their school years and beyond.
**** TEMPO 30 MARCH 2021
NOTES 1 NAfME, "Early Childhood Music Education," NAfME, 2019,
accessed August 10, 2019,
https://nafme.org/about/position-state- ments/early-childhood-music-education/.
2 Stefan Koelsch et al., "Electric Brain Responses Reveal Gender
Differences in Music Processing," NeuroReport 14, no. 5 (2003): , doi:10.1097/00001756-200304150-00010; Stefan Koelsch, "Toward a Neural Basis of Music Perception – A Review and Updated Model," Frontier in Psychology 2 (2011), doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2011.00110.
3 Lois Choksy, The Kodály Method I (Upper Saddle River: Pren-
tice Hall, 1999), 16; Klara Kokas, "Kodály's Concept of Music Edu- cation," Bulletin of the Council for Research in Music Education 22, no. Fall (1970), accessed August 9, 2019,
https://www.jstor.org/ stable/40317114?read-now=1&seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents; Daniel Salbert, "Collecting Repertoire for Kodály-inspired Music Les- sons in Dutch Elementary Schools," July 14, 2015, accessed August 9, 2019,
https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/154479/154604.
4 Missy Strong, "Neuroscience and Music Educa-
tion: Why What We Do Is So Important," July 22, 2019,ac- cessed August 9, 2019,
https://www.smartmusic.com/ blog/neuroscience-and-music-education-why-what-we- do-is-so-important/?utm_content=buffer7d5e1&utm_ medium=social&utm_source=facebook&utm_campaign=daily_ post&fbclid=IwAR2MEtgz-rYuFlYBgAIeRhGfBVdI9XElJWiq0C- gqoddVB85Ot2CMBAgPh64.
5 Edwin E. Gordon, Music Learning Theory for Newborn and
Young Children: 2013 Edition (Gia Publications, 2013). 6
John Feierabend, M, "Music and Intelligence in the Early
Years - Feierabend Association for Music Education: A Tuneful, Beat- ful, Artful Learning Community," 1995, accessed August 9, 2019,
https://www.feierabendmusic.org/music-and-intelligence-in-the- early-years/.
Alene Villaneda, "CORPUS CALLOSUM: Your Child's Su- perhighway for Connecting the Emotional & Logical Sides of the Brain," Integrated Learning Strategies, May 03, 2019, accessed August 10, 2019,
https://ilslearningcorner.com/2016-06-corpus- callosum-childs-superhighway-connecting-emotional-logical-sides- brain-better-learning/?fbclid=IwAR2UCIqerCOsgyxIdjCTjJ85Ru SD4aQ02-0Ci2_X_WWoURwkclqF8M315t0; Alene Villaneda, "Why Crossing the Midline Activities Helped This Child Listen to His Teacher," Integrated Learning Strategies, May 08, 2019, accessed August 12, 2019,
https://ilslearningcorner.com/2015-11-why-cross- ing-the-midline-activities-helped-this-child-listen-to-his-teacher/.
7 8 Edwin E. Gordon, Music Learning Theory for Newborn and
Young Children: 2013 Edition (Gia Publications, 2013); Lili M. Le- vinowitz, "The Importance of Music in Early Childhood," General Music Today 12, no. 1 (1998), doi:10.1177/104837139801200103.
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