Isn't it great to know that your informal sing-songs can help your children boost their vocabulary!? It has been proven by researchers and psychologists that participating in music making will assist children in their language development. With this in mind, here are some suggestions for how you can encourage language development through music making!
Singing, no matter the song, will help with children's language development. Below are some suggestions on how to sing for language development, but please remember that any kind of song will still work towards that goal no matter what.
For younger children, repetitive songs with some vocabulary variety can be a great way to boost language. These can be nursery rhymes such as "Old McDonald Had a Farm", songs that are customisable with names like "Baa Baa Black Sheep" (which you can see on my Instagram post, "Customisable Songs"), or even songs with movements like "Shake All your Instruments", which would focus on listening and comprehension of when to stop and when to play. When toddlers begin to develop their speech, there will be a fair amount of time before they begin to sing along with you, but this is no reason not to sing anyways! Soon enough
For older children, you can begin to have songs with more complicated repetition like " with more verse/chorus structure, like "Sunflower" by Sanford Jones, or even some with a verse/chorus structure like "Rain" by Susan Reed. This is also the perfect time to introduce more songs in different languages, either your second language if you are in a multilingual community, or a selection of languages.
The wonderful thing about singing with children under the age of six is that regardless of the language they speak, they still have the ability to easily learn phonemes and sounds of languages they do not know. Of course this is possible after this age, but the brain is still hardwired to be taking in language at an amazing speed, which is names the sensitive period for language in the Montessori philosophy.
If you have any suggestion on songs you like to sing for language development, get in touch, either on Instagram or at my email ourmontessorimelodies@gmail.com :)