Banging on that glockenspiel can sharpen your child’s reading skills.

Cost-cutting school districts are making a mistake when they cut music from the kindergarten to 12 curriculum. Learning to play an instrument may actually help hone reading skills, more than kindergarten worksheets. So, if your child is a natural music lover, take advantage. Music is not only fun, it’s good for her brain development too.

Nina Kraus, a researcher from the Northwestern University said that music training has profound effects that shape the sensory system and should be a mainstay of K-12 education. 
”Playing an instrument may help youngsters better process speech in noisy classrooms and more accurately interpret the nuances of language that are conveyed by subtle changes in the human voice,” Kraus said in a statement.

“We’ve found that years of music training may also improve how sounds are processed for language and emotion.” 

Music training helps typically developing children as well as children with developmental dyslexia or autism more accurately encode speech. 
This is why music classes of any sort are practically part and parcel of any intervention program for children with autism or dyslexia.

Studies in Kraus’s laboratory indicate music — a high-order cognitive process — affects automatic processing that occurs early in the processing stream. 

”The brainstem, an evolutionarily ancient part of the brain, is modified by our experience with sound,” Kraus said.

“Now we know that music can fundamentally shape our subcortical sensory circuitry in ways that may enhance everyday tasks, including reading and listening in noise.”

Kraus presented her findings at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting in San Diego.

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