Kate Parker

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We Like To Play Music

This easy-to-read picture book contains actual photographs of children playing music, moving to a beat and enjoying music alone or with parents or peers. The rhyming text, using the simplest vocabulary, says how everyone can play music. It emphasizes that no special training is needed to shake a rattle, dance to a beat, or even to form your own "band." The book is meant to inspire little ones (and their parents) to make music alone or together. Research proves that parents and teachers can enrich their toddlers' lives in many ways by encouraging and playing music with them. Human communication skills are helped by exposure to music at an early age even before birth! Neurologically and anthropologically, infants and young children need music as a way to rhythmically organize sounds, and further as a means to express emotions and messages. Music educators and researchers also assert that every human being is born with a degree of musical potential. However, unless this potential is addressed early, through formal or informal environmental stimulation, a child's musical potential will decrease and finally disappear. Music is the gift of a lifetime and offers an avenue of creative expression for children, individually and together. This book advocates and enhances a love of music.