Do you remember the very first stories you learned as a young child? I bet you do. And most likely you learned them from your parents and caregivers who used song as a way to comfort, teach and entertain you. Yep! All those nursery songs about the alphabet, numbers, and eeeentsy-weeentsy spiders were using music to prepare your brain for speech. So forget all that left brain nonsense our parents were taught about music. When grandma was playing the piano, she was enjoying the interplay of both left and right brain activity. This is why learning to play the piano is so beneficial to children. It stimulates neural development, using all five of the basic creative skills. They include Seeing (or Visualization), Observing, Forming Analogies, Inverting, and Simplification. These are the same creative applications found in literature, art and science.

Just as musical stories helped your child establish a foundation of creative skills for language and math concepts, the reverse is also true. Literature, art, and science can help your child achieve their musical dreams! Below are examples of how this happens in piano.

Visualization -