A: S/he is indeed a concerned preschool teacher. It is good to realize that kids will definitely enjoy learning how to sing. However she went beyond and overlooked the part of early development of childhood that specifically points to the attainment of literacy. One of the greatest ways on how to enhance the awareness on the sound which is very vital in learning how to read well is singing.



To explain further, let's talk about phonics. The importance of phonics is it enables children to be aware that each letter in the alphabet has a corresponding sound. An example is the sound of letter ‘d' in the word ‘dog'. There are several sounds to learn and some letters can produce more than a single sound. An example is the letter ‘c'. In the word ‘circus, c is known to be a soft sound while in the word ‘car' c is a distinguished to be a hard sound. In the word ‘chair', c is also drawn in the sound ‘ch'. So now you can see that at least 3 sounds can be made by just a single letter.

When the kids are just getting started on learning how to read, phonic skills can be hard to deal for them especially if they are not exposed before to various sounds for them to listen to that are not at all related to letters or words.

The sound of language is therefore crucial for them to understand. You can get to play with sounds like the animal sounds, create senseless words, make them say the words that rhymes and those that starts with the same sound and anything that you can come up with. You can see if the child is aware of phonics if they can distinguish the rhyme of another word as well as create his own word even if it implies no meaning.

And now let's go back to singing. Music can be jointly heard and spoken. To be able to learn a song, a child doesn't have to know how to read. It is more of celebrating the sound of language since music is full of alliteration, rhymes and various patterns of sound. By letting them singing their favorite songs repeatedly, they become conscious of the sounds and how they can control them – split them, mix them, emphasize specific ones while playing down others.

And so the upshot is this – Sing your heart out. It is great to go back once in a while in singing the usual songs of children, and from there you can also train your child to learn your very own favorite song – be it pop, jazz, rock, and you can even compose a song together. In this manner, you are able to inculcate to your child to love the language which is the basis to know how to read.