The movements the child acquires are not chosen haphazardly, but are fixed, in the sense that each proceeds out of a particular period of development. . . . If you watch a child you will see that he is always playing with something. This means that he is working out, and making conscious, something that his unconscious mind has earlier absorbed. Through this outward experience, in the guise of a game, he examines those things and impressions that he has taken in unconsciously. . . . He is directed by a mysterious power, great and wonderful, that he incarnates little by little. In this way, he becomes a man. He does this with his hands, by experience, first in play and then through work. The hands are the instruments of man’s intelligence.

—Dr. Maria Montessori

What a fabulous quote!

I believe that as babies, and as humans, we are innately musical.  You may not agree with me if you feel that you are tone deaf or can’t play a musical instrument.  But think about our lives.  We brush our teeth to a rhythm, we walk in a coordinated way with muscles, limbs, brain and body integrated in perfect rhythmical harmony without even having to consciously think about it.

Cutting with scissors takes rhythm…. in fact with special needs children I work with, if they can’t cut with scissors, we go back to stead beat work, exposing them to internalizing a steady beat.  Then, they can learn to cut with scissors.

We breathe in rhythm, our hearts beat in rhythm – we are entirely surrounded by songs of birds, musical sound and silence and yet we often say we are not musical.

Your child will develop certain musical abilities at certain times and it is important for you to be aware of what is happening when so you can expose them to a range of activities to help the natural progression of things.

Pre‑natal: While more and more is being learned about foetal reactions to sound and music, less is known about the impact of these experiences on later musical development.

Birth to 1: Newborns 1 to 5 days old have demonstrated an ability to discriminate differences in frequency. The onset of cooing and purposeful vocal sounds is 15‑16 weeks. Five‑month old babies have shown a sensitivity to melodic contour and rhythmic changes. Six‑month old babies have been successful in matching specific pitches. During the first year of life, most babies are alert and responsive to musical stimuli; through babbling and cooing they engage in considerable melodic and intonational experimentation.

1‑1.5: Activation to music through rocking, marching, rolling, and attending intently are more pronounced. Experimentation with pitch variations continues; movement between tones is by glissando, not discrete pitches.

1.5‑2.5: The glissando technique for sliding between ambiguous pitches changes into a capacity for producing discrete pitches. The child begins systematic drill of intervals in fragments, including seconds, minor thirds, and major thirds, gradually expanding to include fourths and fifths. This is a period of spontaneous song, that is, improvised song fragments consisting of the selected intervals being practiced. These songs are not clearly organized and contain little tonality or regularity of rhythms.

2.5‑3: Spontaneous songs gradually give over to recognition and imitation of folk tunes in the environment, such as the ABC song, Old MacDonald, and Twinkle, Twinkle. Often these take the form of multiple repetitions of learned fragments and/or variations. During the next period, the child must accommodate to the limitations of culturally‑approved songs. By the end of the third year a rhythmic structure is learned.

3‑4: By now the child is capable of reproducing an entire song in terms of the overall contour. However, accurate pitch representation, as opposed to contour, is not always possible.

5: An underlying pulse is extracted from surface rhythm so that a child is able to keep a steady beat. The child is now able to sing an entire song in the same key without modulating, with an increasing awareness of a set of pitches instead of just contour.

During the next five years most children increasingly acquire a stable, internal pitch framework. Critical to musical development in the earliest years is the home environment. Opportunities, not just to hear music, but to interact in musical games and activities is critical to emotional and psychological development (Dissanayake, 2000; Gembris & Davidson, 2002). Moreover, it is becoming increasingly apparent that all human beings are biologically predisposed to be musical and that this inborn predisposition for musicality has important consequences for us not only artistically, but emotionally and socially, as well (Hodges, 2000; Imberty, 2000; Trehub, 2000).

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