In our Open Day today, we introduced children to a foreign language (Spanish) through music. The method is the brainchild of Bilingual Beats, an award-winning education company. But rather than trying to explain what their innovative concept is about, why not let participating children, parents and teachers do the, erm, singing ?
Bilingual Beats description of their method:
“Our curriculum combines a carefully balanced mix of linguistic content, such as theme words, phonemes, common sentences and basic structures; and musical content, such as songs, tonal and rhythm patterns, rhythmic rhymes, and instrumental play-alongs, in a wide variety of tonalities, meters, and music styles.
It is based on research done in the fields of music education, language acquisition, CLIL (content and language integrated learning), early childhood education, and child development. Our classes support the child’s cognitive, emotional, social and physical development, in line with the EYFS framework.”
Children have an ability to learn languages from birth. Dr Maria Montessori noted different stages of development, and described them as sensitive periods, during which children seem to have a predisposition to learn a specific skill or set of skills. Bilingual Beats has added an element of fun to the natural language learning process, using music and rhythm to make it more enjoyable. We therefore completely support Bilingual Beats’ method, and believe that children in our setting will benefit tremendously from such partnership.
