Using Music to Enhance Reading Skills

Using Music to Enhance Reading Skills Music is a powerful tool and can be used to
strengthen the skills needed for reading. If your child has dyslexia, learning
disabilities, or other difficulties learning to read, exploring music to compensate for
the difficulty in learning could be a very powerful tool. Studies have proven the
effectiveness of using music to improve word identification, phonemic awareness,
letter and sound recognition, and vocabulary. Listed below are some ways to use our
songs to help the development of reading skills.
1. Use our words to songs from the inside jacket of all of our CDs.
The magic of rhythmic flow of songs can have a positive impact on kids vocabulary
and recognition of printed words. Because of the constant repetition of the words,
the slower rate, and a childs familiarity with each word, our songs are excellent
choices for reading activities. For example, the Bye Bye song (from Imitation Station
CD) is especially good for learning the word Bye (repeated 73 times).
2. Pair up pictures with the printed word.
We have two picture sheets that can be downloaded from the FREE stuff page.
Under each picture, the printed phrases are written for your child to follow along with
the Bye Bye (from Imitation Station CD) and Hi songs (from Vocalocomotion CD).
These song sheets help children to understand the concept of going from left to
right.
3. Combine the pictures and printed words with the songs on our CDs - a
multi-sensory experience for your child.
Encourage your child to draw pictures of words to our songs and create your own
illustrated books with the words printed below each picture. These self-made books
are fun and motivating for children. The songs on our CDs that are especially easy to
illustrate include Bye Bye, Baby Blowing Bubbles, Puppy, Puppy, Puppy (Imitation
Station), Hi, Yee Haw, Bath Time, Lets Eat (Vocalocomotion), Cheese and Macaroni,
I Love, Go (Conversation Station), Sing and Eat to the Alphabeat, Snowman, and
Help Me Mama (Rocking and Talking).
4. Phonemic awareness.
Expose your child to the sounds in words and how those sounds combine to form
words.
a. Songs with rhyming can help children hear the differences in words. Print the
words from Put the Sound on the End (Imitation Station), and use a different color
for each final consonant. Your child can begin not only hearing the similarities and
differences in these words but can start seeing them as well.
b. The song Baby Blowing Bubbles (Imitation Station) heavily emphasizes the b
sound at the beginning of words and can be used as a letter recognition song for that
letter.
c. The song, Go in My Car (Imitation Station) contains vowel repetitions, and can be
used to help children hear and identify the vowels ah, oh, ee, oo, ai, and ay. The New
BMW rap (Vocalocomotion) also contains vowel sounds combined with the
consonants b, m, and w making this an excellent sound and letter recognition tool.
d. The song Bananas (Conversation Station) encourages children to imitate the
letters B A N A N A S. Print out the letters to use with the song.
e. The song Sing and Eat to the Alphabeat (Rocking and Talking) teaches beginning
letter sounds. Use pictures and printed letters for each verse in this song to give your
child the added visual picture of the sounds and words.
5. Using our instrumental-only songs on the Vocalocomotion CD and
Rocking and Talking CD.
The instrumental tracks from Vocalocomotion are excellen for taking books and
reading them rhythmically with the instrumental sounds in the background. Books
such as Brown Bear, Brown Bear by Bill Martin, Jr and Eric Carle, Chicka Chicka Boom
Boom by Bill Martin, Jr., and John Archambault and Hey, Wake Up! by Sandra
Boynton are excellent books to read along with the rhythm of our musical tracks.
Our two instrumental tracks from our Rocking and Talking CD are excellent tools for
expanding to other words. These tracks are the instrumentals from the songs
"What's That?" and "Sing and Eat to the Alphabeat". After your child has learned the
words to these songs, branch out to other words and combine them with the printed
word.

Using music to read is fun and motivating. Enjoy!

Rachel Arntson, M.S., CCC

Speech-Language Pathologist

Click here to listen to samples of our songs