Product reviews for The Little Book of Music for the Classroom

I am a great fan of using music for opening up the IQ of the mind/body in learning and will often use it to do the household cleaning or writing an article. It helps one focus in a way that creates results. So the title of this book was intruiging.

Ians opening story of how parents can sabotage their childrens learning by not understanding the mind/body connection and how we learn is unfortunately a result of an educational system set up to produceworkers in the last 200 years. Academic prowess instead of true learning is thankfully on its way out and whilst there will be the occasional parent who resents their childs enthusiasm for learning through methods other than which they were taught with, despite the results, thankfully more people are beginning to realise we are within a revolution and transformation of the old ways.

This can only have a positive effect in the years to come as the students move into business and transform the corporate culture into one that is more creative, innovative and pleasant to work in than the current model.

Nina states that the common theme running through the book issound waves make brain waves and without a doubt music does effect the mind, body and spirit when it comes to learning. The book has been broken into three parts for using music effectively in learning" memory and focus; relaxation and calm; motivation, stimulation and energising. I really enjoyed the simple recipe lists of suggested music and how to set up thesessions using music and whole brain exercises combined. I really enjoyed seeing the suggestions of learning how to count in different languages by using music from other cultures to learn this. Fabulously innovative and also assisting our students to become multi-lingual, a skill that will be highly sought after in business in the years ahead.

The instructions are clear in terms of what the educator needs to do to prepare their lesson and classroom. The stages are clearly bullet pointed and allow the educator to follow the concept easily. The end of each exercise there is a list of suggested music, which means the exercise can be repeated in several different formats by mixing and matching music for the exercise.

The quotes by other inspirational poets, educators or musicians is a wonderful way to understand the philosophy of how auditory learning is key to grounding information within the learner. Especially as the ears are the first sense organ to develop after the brain/spinal cord. Given the reliance of people listening to music through Ipods and their phones, it only makes sense that bringing music into learning in a disciplined way to encourage learning and emotional intelligence is going to happen more and more in the years.

The other thing that Nina does highlight which I believe is essential in the noisy world we live in, is that silence is just as important as music when used correctly. Every sacred philosophy encouraged the use of sound and silence in equal measure to contact the still voice within and to create a feeling of peace and oneness. So too, does that need to happen in educational facilities where the focus is for students to absorbe more and more information that far surpasses the amount of information their own educators ever had to absorb when they were the same age!

For those who wish to be a pioneer and truly care about their students well being, then using music to speak to their minds and hearts whilst learning facts and figures, is truly an innovative way of transforming teaching within a classroom.