Benefits of Music Education for Multisensory Learning

All learning we experience throughout life is multisensory, taking in sounds, touches, smells, tastes, and sights from the environment around us. Developing theories and exploring possibilities over many attempts is what helps children learn to walk and talk. There are no limits to this type of learning because it is an essential step in every person's progression and development.

When it comes to learning music, multisensory engagement is equally important. Music uses at least three of the five senses and in some cases, such as playing the piano, incorporates all of them. Music education provides a multitude of benefits to children and is an essential component of multisensory learning. It deserves to be considered a genuinely valuable educational tool.

Senses like taste and smell may not be directly associated with musical education, but teachers use dynamics and descriptive language that can be associated with those senses, such as a "sour note" or a "sweet melody." Those words immediately trigger associations with taste and smell, which in turn deepen understanding of what is meant when those terms are used musically.

🧮 What Montessori says about music and multisensory development: Maria Montessori placed music at the center of her educational environment from the earliest years. She believed that music develops the child's sense of order, rhythm, and pattern, which are the same cognitive foundations that underpin mathematical thinking and language acquisition. Montessori used songs, rhythmic movement, and musical instruments as tools for developing auditory discrimination, fine motor control, and emotional regulation simultaneously. Research on music education and cognitive development (Schellenberg, 2004, Psychological Science) found that children who received music lessons showed significantly greater increases in IQ scores than those who did not, with gains across verbal, mathematical, and spatial reasoning. A 2020 meta-analysis in Educational Psychology Review confirmed that music education produced measurable gains in reading, mathematics, and executive function, with the strongest effects for children who began musical instruction before age seven.

Enhanced Cognitive Development

Brainpower is the ultimate goal of most types of learning, whether formal or informal. With more virtual learning available today, there are options for online music and instrument lessons right from home as well.

When children learn to read and write music, cognitive skills are engaged at a multisensory level. Rather than simply reading and writing notation, they are simultaneously processing the sounds each note or rhythm produces. Sight, sound, and touch are all used at once: students listen to the music, manually count out beats through clapping or tapping, and use their bodies to feel the rhythm.

There is also a well-documented correlation between music and memory recall. Using songs to help children memorize words and lyrics carries over into other areas of learning, including the ability to recall specific information in academic contexts. When people can receive and process information through more than one sense simultaneously, understanding is deeper and retention is stronger. Having multiple pathways for teaching the same concept is also especially valuable because every child learns differently.

Research on academic achievement and music education has shown that students with musical training consistently outperform peers in IQ scores, standardized tests, and specific subjects including mathematics and reading.

Child engaged in music education and multisensory learning

Expression of Feelings and Social Skills

As children, much of our language is learned through listening to sing-song music, often using rhymes. This carries over into multisensory learning as a way to teach children how to communicate beyond words. Experiencing music visually and emotionally creates moods and feelings that help us convey what might otherwise be difficult to express verbally.

Understanding music can be a way of understanding ourselves. Certain musical genres, instruments, and voices that appeal to us provide a window into our inner lives and open doors to creativity and potential. Social skills are equally enhanced through music, as it creates common ground with others who share the same interests. Since music and the performing arts rate very high on the creative scale, music offers a powerful avenue for self-expression.

Along with expression, musical emotions give us insight into others. Empathy and compassion are deeply embedded in music, and the ability to recognize and relate to those feelings in others is one of the lasting gifts that musical education provides.

Confidence Building

Performance and expression in the creative arts is a judgment-free experience, one where students can feel comfortable learning and developing without fear of doing something incorrectly. This guides students toward greater confidence and self-assurance, which in turn paves the way for taking healthy risks and developing leadership qualities throughout life.

Consider a simple song like "The Itsy Bitsy Spider." Students learn rhythms and use their sense of touch through hand movements for the spider crawling up the spout. They use sound to match pitch and intonation. They visually observe the instrument being played or the mouth that is singing in order to mimic what they hear. All of this learning is contained within a single simple song. It is easy to see how music reaches multisensory levels even in the most familiar activities.

Another example of multisensory learning through music is having students create homemade instruments. This experience not only teaches children how to make music with something they have built themselves, but the making process also connects to art, another creative subject that should be cultivated in multisensory learning.

Music is an excellent tool for learning and should always be included within the curriculum. The benefits of musical education span many dimensions and are an essential part of development. Learning music at a multisensory level brings joy and builds real-life skills including self-confidence, emotional expression, communication, and academic success.