Music. It helps us express ourselves. It expands our consciousness. It draws us together. Since ancient times, humans have relied upon music as a fundamental form of communication. Even today, we can see how children, from an early age, are drawn to music.

Always the scientist and observer, Dr. Maria Montessori recognized the essential place of music in children’s development. She collaborated with a number of musicians to develop a comprehensive music program to support children’s music appreciation and expression. The Montessori music program begins with sensorial experiences that build to children developing an acute awareness of pitch and rhythm. These experiences and activities then evolve into children learning the construction of musical scales and even perfecting how to write, read, and compose music. These components ultimately support children and adolescents’ abilities to use music as a form of self-expression.

Early Experiences

From our earliest moments of life, we absorb the sounds of our environment. A fetus hears the rhythm of the mother’s heartbeat, breathing, and body systems. Expecting parents may sing or tell a story and their unborn child takes in the patterning and intonations of their voices. Newborns use these sounds as a way to have points of reference while orienting to life outside of the womb.

When working with infants and toddlers, we slow down so as to observe and listen to sounds and movements in nature. Hearing and relating to the natural music around us helps us be better attuned to the music in everything. As adults, we model this reflective pace, especially in our fast-paced society.

In the process of learning through imitation, our youngest children try to mimic sounds, first by copying movements with their mouths and later with their bodies. Thus, we model connection to music and openness to learning and experiencing musical expression, both in the traditional sense and through experiences in nature. Because music moves us emotionally and calls forth varied feelings, we also show how to express these emotions by moving our bodies, dancing, and singing. Young children need to experience music so they can make it part of their human experience.

Musical instruments in our infant and toddler communities are often related to nature and the sounds of nature. We provide multiples of each instrument so that when singing songs together, everyone can have a rhythm stick, or other appropriate musical instruments, and keep the beat together. We offer different kinds of high-quality instruments because the sounds affect individuals in different ways. Like with any other material in a Montessori classroom, the adults present the appropriate use of each kind of instrument to the children.

When children get a little older and move into the Primary or Children’s House level, we offer four strands of music education: singing, rhythm, music appreciation, and music literacy.

Children’s House: Singing

Singing begins right away in the Children’s House! We are helping young children realize that their voice is an amazing instrument. We share and teach easy-to-learn songs, as well as model how to express a range of emotions through the musical experience of singing. Folk songs offer high-quality melodies and expressive lyrics, as well as topics that reflect real-world qualities and real-life experiences–from celebrations and holidays to the weather, geography, and just everyday life.

When we introduce songs in the Children’s House, we first sing without any accompaniment so that the children learn how to find the right pitch. Once the children know a song very well, we may complement the singing with a piano, guitar, dulcimer, or the classroom bells.

Children’s House: Rhythm

Young children are so adept at rhythm. From the very beginning, life inside the womb was a rhythmic wonderland, with the symphony of the mother’s heartbeat, digestion, and respiration. Continuing throughout their lives, children experience rhythm all around them. We support the development and refinement of rhythm through activities that involve walking, running, marching, and skipping on an ellipse on the classroom floor, as well as through percussive instruments and music with distinctive rhythmic patterns. We may introduce hand and foot movements during songs, as well as the use of rhythm instruments. Some children also begin rhythm notation while in the Children’s House.

Children’s House: Music Appreciation

Through recorded music selections, we offer the history and culture of different kinds of musical expression in the human experience. When introducing a new piece, we give its name, the name of the composer, and the type of music it represents. These lessons are correlated to what the child knows in history, geography, art, and current events. When musicians visit to play an instrument for the children, we expand the experience with related vocabulary, stories, and listening opportunities.

Children’s House: Music Literacy

Although most settings don’t introduce music literacy to young children, we offer it as we do writing–as a means for sounds to be saved and held. While improvised work is lost into the air, writing down notes saves the idea and allows the possibility of communicating without face-to-face contact.

In the Children’s House, the bells become the children’s second instrument. We begin music literacy as soon as children can pair the bells of the diatonic scale and when they show an interest in the names of the pitches.

To introduce music literacy skills, we isolate two difficulties: notation for melody and notation for pitch. These two pathways start separately in the Children’s House but are joined in the Montessori elementary program.

In addition to working with the tone bars to dive deeply into music notation, scales, and composition, children at the elementary level continue experiences with listening, music history and literature, playing instruments, singing, movement, and rhythm.

Elementary: Rhythm

In elementary, children start with a sensorial experience of four-beat measure patterns, and we soon introduce the notation for these four-beat patterns. Children begin to be able to read rhythmic patterns for familiar names (of people and items), which also prepares them for an understanding of syllabification. Through this work, they begin to be able to notate patterns that they hear and to find notation patterns in printed music. They also get to experience finding words that will fit different rhythmic patterns and can practice notating the rhythm of spoken words.

Elementary: Playing Instruments

We first use games to introduce elementary children to various instruments and then support them in using instruments to accompany class songs. As their expertise grows and they are able to maintain a steady beat, students may form a small band and can even learn how to have a conductor!

Whenever possible, we support children in seeing and hearing real orchestral instruments, including the music and instruments of other cultures. As children listen to individual instruments and combinations of instruments, they learn to differentiate between different qualities of sound that instruments create.

Elementary: Listening

We approach the art and skill of listening very deliberately. The adults set an example by listening to children and by speaking quietly and in clear sentences with precise pronunciation. Even in the elementary, we play listening games–from investigating how our bodies make noise, to taking listening walks, to enjoying mystery sound games, to exploring the absence of sound–all of which provide opportunities to focus on listening skills. The children also relish opportunities to listen to recorded music, both independently and as a group, and to be able to discuss what they heard.

Elementary: Tone Bars

The tone bars are elementary students’ primary musical instrument. Children in the elementary can often be found composing and playing on the tone bars and as they experiment with sounds and the relationships of the tone bars, they are essentially in the babbling stage of language development. With extended exposure and practice, this “babbling” can evolve into children being able to pick up tunes by ear.

Eventually, elementary students use the tone bars for learning major and minor scales, whole steps and half steps, transposition, the musical staff, music notation, composition, pitch dictation, degrees of the scale, intervals, sharps and flats, and key signatures.

Montessori Music Program

Montessori music begins sensorially, isolates difficulty, and engages children in spontaneous activity and meaningful self-expression. The Montessori music program is constructed so that the keys to music can be presented as a language of communication. We consider music to be an element of total literacy and thus give music as much emphasis as we give to mathematics and language as essential tools of communication. As a result, as children move toward adulthood, they are able to use musical expression as a way to better understand themselves and the world around them.

We invite you to come to visit our school to see (and hear) how music comes alive in our classrooms!

Montessori-based research is a fairly new field of study, but interest is increasing. The following is a summary of a recent published study that addressed concerns in the area of Montessori music education in primary classrooms. We found it fascinating, and we thought you might, too!

The Research Study

Click here to read the full published article.

Diana R. Dansereau of Boston University and Brooke M. Wyman of Bristol, Rhode Island published their article entitled: A Child-Directed Music Curriculum in the Montessori Classroom this past spring. They wanted to address a perceived disparity in the types of sensory materials offered to children in Montessori primary classrooms. More specifically, they gathered data suggesting that over time, modern Montessori classrooms have come to rely more heavily on visual sensory materials than materials that teach children to refine their other senses (including discrimination for sound).

Numerous studies, along with the work of Dr. Montessori herself, have indicated that early childhood exposure to music education and auditory sensory discrimination education have overwhelmingly positive and powerful impacts on children. Just as with other areas of study and skills that must be mastered, it appears that there is a sensitive period for learning music that ends prior to age 7. This means that while of course children have an ability to learn music after that age, they are in a prime position to master those skills earlier.

The researchers noted that Dr. Montessori herself had concerns about the application of her music materials in the classroom. For example, only one set of sound-based materials could be used at a time, and to identify variations in sound one would need to work in relative silence. This was certainly challenging during her time, and seemingly impossible now. Dansereau and Wyman set out to create and test a solution.

“...we sought to answer the question “How is a curriculum of music- and sound-based works developed, implemented, and received in a Montessori classroom?”

— Dansereau and Wyman

Dansereau, being a music teacher, early childhood music education researcher, and Montessori parent, and Wyman, being a Montessori primary guide, were in a perfect position to conduct the study. Their initial conversations included Wyman’s students, other primary teachers, and the head of school. Six shelf works were designed and tested. They included the use of a small plastic box with a battery, power switch, headphone jack, and a series of visually identical plastic discs. A child wears the headphones and replaces the discs one at a time to hear different sounds. The materials are briefly described below:

For working memory and audiation (sound memory) - A wooden tree with spaces for removable discs. Children would listen to the sounds on each disc, then place them in order according to pitch. The material contained a built-in control of error so that children could independently check for accuracy.
For pitch direction - Children listened to discs that played sliding pitches, then matched what they heard to visual pictures with lines drawn accordingly.
For pitch direction - Similar to the second work, children replaced the two-dimensional pictures with a three-dimensional manipulative.
For melodic direction - While listening to a recording of a piano, children used a small toy kangaroo to travel across a three-dimensional path along with the music.
For melodic direction - Similar to the previous work, children listened to trombone music instead.

Wyman presented each material to the group using traditional Montessori methods, after which they were placed on the shelves for independent use. Students were observed and data was collected in six cycles over a period of two years.

During the course of the work Wyman noted: “What I have witnessed so far with the two materials we have piloted is an overwhelming need for more of this type of work. The children in my current class have demonstrated a deeper level of concentration with this work. In part, I am sure [it is] because of the use of their auditory sense: if they are distracted by others in the classroom, listening to their friends, or carrying on a conversation, they will miss the very essence of the work. What I find fascinating is that this work must be fulfilling an essential need, because even my most social children go to the material and tune everything else out.”

Overall, the researchers noted their data indicated positive findings. The children became more engaged with music education, they interacted positively with the materials, their confidence increased, and there were obvious signs of deep concentration. They did note some limitations, such as the inability to record all interactions with the materials due to the nature of a Montessori classroom environment, as well as the children’s understanding that the materials were somewhat novel in nature. They felt that some of the materials were more beneficial than others, or that adjustments may need to be made with one or two of the materials.

Dansereau and Wyman felt the study was a positive initial step in addressing the disparity in sensory materials in the Montessori primary classroom. They were encouraged by the results and believe more research should be done in this area, including with classrooms that serve children of varied demographics.

We are curious to hear your thoughts on this topic. What might next steps be in individual Montessori classrooms? Could the materials be replicated? Could others be introduced? How might we, as educators, ensure we are providing more balanced sensory instruction?