research resources
Playing, laughing, language and music are the common denominators that cross all barriers and between all cultures.
STANDARDS FOR FOLKLIFE EDUCATION
38 page PDF Collection of Children's Folksongs, Chants and Rhymes
Indigenous Folksong Reading Curriculum
NCFR EVOLUTIONARY SCIENCE RESEARCH ARTICLES PDF
Playing is serious work for the young and old from the novice to the experienced. It's about all the different ways we play to learn. Larger brains are linked to greater levels of play. In other words, playing makes you intelligent. Rich or poor, young or old, male or female, play has evolved to shape the overall architecture and to build big brains, explaining why children need the playground just as much as the classroom. Play is for Life Long Learners.
PLAY RESOURCES AND REFERENCES
The ordinary work of childhood is about connecting with the creative impulse. Laughter originated in primates before humans, and it represents a universal signal of well being in a playful situation. In that way, it helps to regulate social interactions.
TEACH HISTORY THROUGH SONG
HOW AND WHY MUSIC MAKES YOU SMARTER
- LANGUAGE IS MUSIC TO THE BRAIN
- Study Ties Mental Abilities To Interaction of Emotion and Cognitive Skills
"Since the beginning of time, children have not liked to study. They would much rather play, and if you have their interests at heart, you will let them learn while they play; they will find that what they have mastered is child's play." -- Carl Orff - Music Leaves it's mark on the brain.
Speech Recognition: Consider William Condon's observation of conversational synchrony, that motions and gestures of listeners are closely synchronized with the rhythms of a speakers voice. - Having fun builds better brains.
- How Does Your Brain Work
How is the brain of a young child different from the adult? Children who have musical training also have significantly better verbal memory than children who don't, and the difference increases the longer they study. Music training during childhood contributes to the reorganization and increased development of the [4]brain's left temporal lobes in musicians. After administering verbal memory tests that calculated the number of words children could recall from a list, and a comparable visual memory test for images, the researchers found that students with musical training had better verbal memory. Musically trained students retained more words even after a 30 minute delay. Even though having fewer than six years of musical training can boost verbal memory, the researchers say that more training boosts cortical reorganization in the left temporal region and improves the ability to handle other functions such as verbal learning. And the benefits of musical training appear to be long-lasting. Students who dropped out of the advanced training group were tested after a year and found to retain the verbal memory advantage they had gained earlier. 
Evolutionary relationship between music and language- HANDS AND SPEECH
The parts of the brain that control hand movement and speech sounds are very close together. The origin of language. Communication evolved hand-in-hand with social bonding. "The work tells us that communication is right there at the base of social behaviour and that having a larger vocal repertoire allows you to have a more complex social set up," says Karen McComb, at the University of Sussex, UK - The building blocks of music are to be found in speech.
The Journal Nature Neuroscience devoted a special issue to the topic. And in an article in the August 6 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience, David Schwartz, Catherine Howe, and Dale Purves of Duke University argued that the sounds of music and the sounds of language are intricately connected. http://www.jneurosci.org/cgi/content/abstract/23/18/7160
Children aged 3 who are musiking with their parent are building a foundation for reading and are learning better language skills. In the first 5 years of life, almost everything they need to know, can and should be taught in a playful way. Play can build a strong foundation on music, mathematics, science and reading.
JOURNEY FROM THE REAL PLAYGROUND TO THE CYBERPLAYGROUND 1976 - 2006 Background Story
- Literacy - Dialect speakers use music as a bridge to the standard.
- Linguistics - What is a dialect?
- TEACH READING THROUGH SONG - With a Simple Tune, Students Improve In School
- Melody and Language learning for children
The memetic origin of language: modern humans as musical primates. Interdisciplinary connections between Language, Music, Evolution, and Reading. - Dr. Ward’s Home page
What led to this study
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Importance of Study
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Save These Folk Songs - Nasty Nursery Rhymes