Miriam Schnider holds her four-month-old son, Jaxon, as he confidently hits his little mallet on a baby xylophone to the tune of the Beatles? ?Yellow Submarine.? They?re seated on a living-room carpet in a circle of four smiling babies and their parents. One little tyke shakes a rattle to the rhythm of the guitar; another bounces up and down in her mom?s arms.
It?s their fifth week at Little Tunes, a baby music class for infants and toddlers three to 18 months old in Toronto, run by Schnider?s friend, certified music therapist Miya Adout. There, Schnider and her little man do everything from singing to playing instruments. Jaxon was timid at first, but now he?s a natural.
?He loves the drums,? says Schnider, an early-childhood educator and elementary school teacher. ?He?ll actually bang his fists like Donkey Kong on them?he goes crazy with it.? Adout says the goal of her baby music class is to ?have parent and infant bond through music-making.? As parent and child connect using music, babies also enjoy other important benefits.
A 2012 study out of McMaster University showed that babies who participated in music classes with their parents in the first year of life ?smile more, communicate better and show earlier and more sophisticated brain responses to music.?
Laurel Trainor, the author of the study and the director of the McMaster Institute for Music and the Mind, says that through hands-on music classes, infants are exposed to activities that help develop their motor skil...