Fashionable Media Review Policy: The featured product for this review was provided to me, at no cost, by the manufacturer or representing PR agency for the sole purpose of product testing. Opinions expressed are my own and are not influenced by monetary compensation.
Music causes the mind to think smarter:
a.. Medical scans track brain activity.
b.. Music is one of the very few whole brain activities, engaging all four parts of the brain!
c.. All other tasks use either the left or right brain.
d.. Music exercises all of the brain. How? 1) When playing music, the mind chooses how fast or slow to play, with what style, rhythm, phrasing, and feeling. 2) It also tells the fingers when to move, reads and memorizes. When playing music, you do ALL of this at the SAME TIME! 3) The more you play, the more you exercise your mind. The exercised mind thinks better, making a student smarter.
Music has been proven to help children’s brains to develop, one of the reasons our five older children take piano! So when this product came across my desk and seemed like it might teach my younger ones about music I accepted the opportunity to review it.
The Thump in the Night i, written by Sharon Burch, is a children’s book geared towards teaching children about the fundamentals of music. The book includes a CD which is an audio version of the book. Our children really enjoyed the book and the audio version of it. The story is about a frog who lives on Treble Clef Island and within the illustrations are the musical symbols of the treble clef staff and the single whole note. Freddie the Frog hears a thump in the night and while he is frightened, he still gets up to investigate. His investigation takes him on an adventure during the middle of the night.
My older children “got” the book and what it was trying to teach, but even my youngest in piano did not notice the musical notes until they were pointed out to him and this was after several sessions of listening to the audio book and us reading it to him. I think he was just so involved in the story to notice the notes to be honest.
I think over time the information the author wants to teach will be more evident to the children as I sit and point out the different musical fundamentals. However, so far they are simply enjoying the story of Freddie the frog to notice the lessons in music.
The book illustrations are cute and at first I thought that it might be scary for the little ones with talk of monsters and being afraid in the night, but they weren’t. They were pretty enraptured with the story line itself. So I was thankful!
There is also a frog puppet and flashcards available for purchase to compliment the book. All of which are available at Amazon.com The book and CD retail for $23.95 and would be a great educational gift to have under the Chrismas tree for your children.
Narrated video reading:
http://vidego.multicastmedia.com/player.php?v=ou387311
Cognitive benefits of music:
www.freddiethefrogbooks.com/childmusicoutline.html
http://www.musicfriends.org/
Author bio:
http://www.freddiethefrogbooks.com/author.html
To learn more:
www.freddiethefrogbooks.com
To purchase:
Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Borders
