The Magic of Music in the Classroom

How can you incorporate music into your classroom and what does that do for your students? What can it do for you? In today’s episode, you’ll hear from Mary Anderson, founder of My Music Starts Here and the creator and host of Songs and Stories on Virginia PBS. She has a lot of wonderful information to share about how sharing music with children impacts them. 

Listen to the episode to learn about how music affects communication and literacy, what’s happening in their lives and in their brains when someone is singing and sharing music with them, and how teachers can share music just using their own bodies or things they have in their classrooms. 

Topics Discussed in This Episode

• [00:01:37] Mary’s background
• [00:04:47] The impacts of sharing music with children
• [00:07:58] Why teachers should share music even if they’re insecure about their own singing
• [00:09:24] What happens in children’s brains when someone sings with them
• [00:13:00] The purpose of using music for communication
• [00:16:30] Connecting music to literacy
• [00:20:50] Making music with things in the classroom
• [00:25:04] Sharing music to build social skills
• [00:29:35] How music helps teachers
• [00:32:28] Takeaways that teachers can use with children right away
• [00:37:32] Incorporating different cultures into musical experiences for children

Resources

Mary Anderson

My Music Starts Here