Musical toys aim to stimulate young minds

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 07/12/2002 (8380 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Coloured blobs, stars and planets move slowly across the television screen to the beat of a piano rendition of variations on Mozart’s Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.

Baby toys dance to another Mozart tune, and then fuzzy farm animals are pictured in a rhythmic pattern on this short video designed specifically for the babe and toddler set.

Initially skeptical that her active two-year-old would watch patterns and toys moving to music, Winnipeg mother Lilli Williams was surprised at her son’s reaction.

“Jamie stared at it the whole time. There is something visually stimulating about it,” she explains.

For parents and older children conditioned to expect a storyline, there doesn’t seem to be much substance to these short baby music videos, produced by companies such as Brainy Baby or the Walt Disney-owned Baby Einstein.

Yet these videos are designed to develop young minds, based on research that shows early exposure to slow, baroque-style classical music can play a key role in developing language, balance and movement.

“What makes a brain healthy is order, repetition and variation,” explains teacher, researcher and musician Don Campbell, author of the acclaimed The Mozart Effect and The Mozart Effect for Children, as well as several albums by the same name.

Campbell, sometimes called the Dr. Spock of music, says playing classical music (often Mozart, but not just), reciting nursery rhymes and singing children’s songs give babies and children a sense of time, space and language.

Many toy-makers are playing along with Campbell’s premise that exposing young children to music is a good thing.

In addition to the Baby Einstein videos (featuring composers like Bach, Mozart and Beethoven), the company, recently purchased by Disney, also has a series of board books.

Building-block manufacturer LEGO has joined the musical chorus with its Music Builder Composer, which allows children to vary instrumentation of songs by plugging into colour-coded sockets which play melody, harmony and bass. The company also makes a variation on the toddler push-toy with its Music Builder Roller.

Other products include Neurosmith’s award-winning Sunshine Symphony, a plush toy for toddlers which plays four classical compositions, and its much-lauded Musini, a small, battery-powered sound machine which transforms the child’s energy into music by responding to vibrations.

Embryonic’s Mozart Magic Cube allows infants to play several instruments or a full orchestra, depending on which of the colour-coded cubes are inserted in the electronic base. In addition to the sound, lights flash to the beat of the sound.

Manufacturers also are bringing keyboards into infant range.

“In a lot of ways, they are looking at traditional play and expanding upon it,” says toy retailer Cathy Babb of Scholar’s Choice.

But the benefits of exposing children to music have to be weighed against the source of the sound, says Campbell, who has declined to endorse any of the new musical toys crowding the marketplace. Parents need to play with these toys themselves to decide whether they make noise or meaningful music, he suggests.

“I think your intuition can tell you whether this is a pleasant sound,” says the Colorado-based Campbell, who recently released his third album, Music for Babies: Daytime Playtime in the Mozart Effect Series, produced by the Children’s Group of Toronto.

In the end, all the brain research in the world only underscores what parents know intuitively: Singing, chanting and talking to your baby are the best ways to turn out a bright kid.

“Nothing replaces playing and singing with your child,” says Campbell, who encourages even the most tone-deaf parent to vocalize. “Nothing comes close to it. Read stories to your child every night.”

That’s exactly what Lilli Williams intends to do. A trained pianist and singer, she sees the value of the kiddie music video, but doesn’t plan to buy one for her young son. “I would rather buy a book.”

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Winnipeg mother Terese Taylor has put her experiences of negotiating the city with a child in tow to good use in a new, self-published booklet Tots Along! This 20-page guide to child-friendly businesses, resources and activities in Winnipeg is designed to pull together all this essential information in one handy place, says Taylor, mother of a three-year-old girl.

“Becoming a parent is such a transition. It’s like rediscovering the whole city. Your needs change.”

Tots Along! is available free at public libraries, family centres, public health nurses’ offices, Winnipeg Tourism and the Manitoba Children’s Museum, or for $3 from McNally-Robinson Booksellers.

brenda@suderman.com