Using Music to Enhance Reading Skills Music is a powerful tool and can be used to strengthen the skills needed for reading. If your child has dyslexia, learning disabilities, or other difficulties learning to read, exploring music to compensate for the difficulty in learning could be a very powerful tool. Studies have proven the effectiveness of using music to improve word identification, phonemic awareness, letter and sound recognition, and vocabulary. Listed below are some ways to use our songs to help the development of reading skills.
1. Use our words to songs from the inside jacket of all of our CDs.
The magic of rhythmic flow of songs can have a positive impact on kids’ vocabulary and recognition of printed words. Because of the constant repetition of the words, the slower rate, and a child’s familiarity with each word, our songs are excellent choices for reading activities. For example, the Bye Bye song (from Imitation Station CD) is especially good for learning the word Bye (repeated 73 times).
2. Pair up pictures with the printed word.
We have two picture sheets that can be downloaded from the “FREE stuff” page. Under each picture, the printed phrases are written for your child to follow along with the Bye Bye (from Imitation Station CD) and Hi songs (from Vocalocomotion CD). These song sheets help children to understand the concept of going from left to right.
3. Combine the pictures and printed words with the songs on our CDs - a multi-sensory experience for your child.
Encourage your child to draw pictures of words to our songs and create your own illustrated books with the words printed below each picture. These self-made books are fun and motivating for children. The songs on our CDs that are especially easy to illustrate include Bye Bye, Baby Blowing Bubbles, Puppy, Puppy, Puppy (Imitation Station), Hi, Yee Haw, Bath Time, Let’s Eat (Vocalocomotion), Cheese and Macaroni, I Love, Go (Conversation Station), Sing and Eat to the Alphabeat, Snowman, and Help Me Mama (Rocking and Talking).
4. Phonemic awareness.
Expose your child to the sounds in words and how those sounds combine to form words.
a. Songs with rhyming can help children hear the differences in words. Print the words from Put the Sound on the End (Imitation Station), and use a different color for each final consonant. Your child can begin not only hearing the similarities and differences in these words but can start seeing them as well.
b. The song Baby Blowing Bubbles (Imitation Station) heavily emphasizes the “b” sound at the beginning of words and can be used as a letter recognition song for that letter.
c. The song, Go in My Car (Imitation Station) contains vowel repetitions, and can be used to help children hear and identify the vowels ah, oh, ee, oo, ai, and ay. The New BMW rap (Vocalocomotion) also contains vowel sounds combined with the consonants b, m, and w making this an excellent sound and letter recognition tool.
d. The song Bananas (Conversation Station) encourages children to imitate the letters B A N A N A S. Print out the letters to use with the song.
e. The song Sing and Eat to the Alphabeat (Rocking and Talking) teaches beginning letter sounds. Use pictures and printed letters for each verse in this song to give your child the added visual picture of the sounds and words.
5. Using our instrumental-only songs on the Vocalocomotion CD and Rocking and Talking CD.
The instrumental tracks from Vocalocomotion are excellen for taking books and reading them rhythmically with the instrumental sounds in the background. Books such as Brown Bear, Brown Bear by Bill Martin, Jr and Eric Carle, Chicka Chicka Boom Boom by Bill Martin, Jr., and John Archambault and Hey, Wake Up! by Sandra Boynton are excellent books to read along with the rhythm of our musical tracks.
Our two instrumental tracks from our Rocking and Talking CD are excellent tools for expanding to other words. These tracks are the instrumentals from the songs "What's That?" and "Sing and Eat to the Alphabeat". After your child has learned the words to these songs, branch out to other words and combine them with the printed word.

Using music to read is fun and motivating. Enjoy!

Rachel Arntson, M.S., CCC
Speech-Language Pathologist

Click here to listen to samples of our songs