Here are 7 powerful reasons why you should be using music games with your children in your classroom or studio.

By Janice Tuck

As teachers we know that music incorporates so many amazing benefits to our children such a s encouraging creative thinking, developing math and reading skills and boosting self -confidence. But try telling this to a student and their eyes glaze over. In fact they don’t even care about the benefits they just want to have fun!

Over my years as a teacher, music school owner and now as a parent, I have found games to be a main motivator in teaching children, to play music.

The thing is there is no instruction manual on how to make music lessons fun and everyone can easily do it. The great news is you can too!

Here are my top 7 powerful reasons why games should be part of every child’s music lessons.

Games Motivate
There is something about the word “game” that motivates children and adults alike. When you say “lets do some work now” how does that compare to “lets play a game now” – I’m sure you’ll agree the differences in enthusiasm are enormous.

Games break up the monotony
You can sit at an instrument for ages sometimes and play the same things over and over again –making the same mistakes simply because there is no change of pace. A game is a great way of breaking this cycle up.

Games help you enjoy the experience rather than make it hard work
Sometimes practice can feel like a torture session rather than an enjoyable everyday event. Games help make your child look forward to their practice session rather than dread it.

Teachers have the opportunity to evaluate their students learning
There is not a worse feeling in teaching than when you take the time to explain a concept to a student (or classes of students) and minutes later you ask them a question about it they have no idea ….I remember it vividly as a new teacher. Games give you the perfect opportunity to talk about and evaluate your students knowledge.

Games help you approach learning the same ideas in various ways
Sometimes in learning new concepts you can get stuck…it may be a new playing technique, a concept or a mental block or barrier that a child has placed in their own mind. Games can help you approach these problems in many different ways. Infact sometimes you can play a number of different games based on the same knowledge or concepts.

Games help children retain more
Children are actively involved when they play games. They cannot play a game being passive they have to be involved to win and because they get excited and involved in the game they retain more information.

You can approach harder concepts through playing games.
You can teach new and harder concepts without having to tell your students. To the student, its all about winning the game not about the content of the game- even though it is a great spin off effect.

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