Music Makes Math Meaningful

Childhood Education, Winter 2003/2004 by Edelson, R Jill, Johnson, Gretchen

Today, everything seems to be interconnected. In the education community, "interdisciplinary" teaching is the latest buzzword. While good early childhood teachers have been teaching in an interdisciplinary manner for years, there is one combination that could be strengthened: math and music.

By integrating mathematics and music, teachers will be able to help children achieve national and state learning standards in mathematics as well as the creative arts. For example, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) (2000) calls for teachers to help children make mathematical connections in contexts outside of mathematics. Also, components of appropriate practice for young children, as defined by the National Association for the Education of Young Children (Bredekamp & Copple, 1997), state that math needs to be integrated with songs; children need to understand notation, rhythm, and explore their relationships; children need to have daily opportunities for aesthetic expressions and appreciation through j art and music; and children need to learn from self-directed problem solving and experimentation.

The connections between music and math are ever-present. Brain researcher Eric Jensen, when asked about the arts and education, stated that "music is a part of all of us, and it's critical to us as learners to develop pattern-making," adding that math skills tend to be stronger in students who have a music background (D'Arcangelo, 1998, p. 25). Using music to enhance a curriculum, such as math, enriches the environment for children, creates an atmosphere free of undue pressure and stress and infused with a degree of pleasurable intensity, promotes exploration and the fun of learning, and allows the child to be an active participant rather than a passive observer (Diamond & Hobson, 1998).

Teachers can use music to enhance children's pleasure and understanding of difficult mathematics concepts and skills. Children need active, experiential learning experiences in meaningful contexts to develop complex thinking skills and problem solving. Grandin, Peterson, and Shaw (1998) state that music enhances spatial-temporal reasoning skills, which are crucial to learning proportional reasoning and geometry skills. Rauscher et al. (1997) found that music promotes the development of such thinking skills as recognizing patterns and using logic. This type of thinking is essential for mathematics and science.

Pattern Activities

The idea of pattern is a powerful one that not only is essential to mathematics and music, it also cuts across all other curriculum areas. Pattern work prepares children for the patterns they will encounter in the number system, such as alternating odd and even numbers. In music, children find patterns in the repeated melodies, refrains, or rhythms of a song. A pattern is an arrangement of elements that repeats according to a rule. Work with patterns enhances children's thinking and reasoning skills, because they must: 1) analyze the pattern to figure out the rule, 2) communicate the rule in words, and 3) predict what will come next in the pattern. In addition, children also can learn to translate a pattern. When children translate a pattern, they refer to the same rule but express the pattern using a different medium or materials. Thus a one, two, one, two pattern can become a skip, jump, skip, jump pattern. The rule is the same-there are two elements that alternate-but the number pattern has been translated into a series of physical movements.

Name Patterns. Demonstrate how to use beats on a drum to represent the syllables in a first name, beginning with your own. Take the class attendance using the drum, and have the children listen carefully to each child's name to see who might share sound patterns.

"Hello, Jane" (strike once on the drum as you say the name). "Hello, Hen-ry" (strike twice on the drum). "Hello, Jen-ni-fer" (strike 3 times). "Hello, Al-ex-ander" (strike 4 times). Beat one, two, three, or four beats on the drum and ask children to group themselves together when they hear the number of drum beats that corresponds to the number of syllables in their names. The children then can decide which group (or set) is the largest or the smallest.

Translating a Pattern. This activity is designed to help children translate a pattern from one medium to another; for example, from sound to visual. Strike a name pattern on the drum; when the children with that name pattern stand up, give each child an index card on which his or her sound pattern is represented by "bumps"-one bump for a one-syllable name, two bumps for a two-syllable name, etc. Have the children arrange themselves into a one-bump, two-bump, one-bump, two-bump pattern. One child can strike the sound pattern with the drum while the other children clap their hands. Then, ask the children to suggest new patterns.

Graphing Sound Patterns. Children exchange their bump card for a colored Post-it note (e.g., yellow for one syllable, blue for two syllables, pink for three syllables, and green for four syllables), and place their Post-it notes on a large sheet of paper on the wall; thus, the children can prepare a graph from the data (see photo #1). Ask the children to describe what they see on the graph.