VECS ECST4 - Early Childhood Cello

Course description

The Conservatory's Early Childhood Cello Program offers a balanced approach to specialized instruction for children ages 4 to 8. Your child will benefit by being in a supportive group setting where games and songs provide an enjoyable child-centered environment, while group classes provide you a cost-effective way to ensure your child profits from an exceptional learning experience. Students learn through games, songs, solfege, rhythm, music reading and storytelling. After one to two years, depending on the individual child, they will be able to play with good posture and physical setup, exhibit good technical fundamentals, be grounded in sound production, rhythm and solfege, perform simple melodies on their instruments and know how to properly care for their instruments. In addition to the intrinsic value of learning to play an instrument well, studies show there are many non-musical benefits for your child including more robust brain stem responses to sound, improved discrimination of pitch and segmentation, enhanced neural processing of speech-improved working memory and cognitive flexibility, enhanced reading abilities, improved spatial-navigational reasoning, visual form analysis, numerical discrimination and receptive vocabulary, increased finger motor skills, auditory discrimination skills and the ability to focus in noisy environments, as well as differences in brain activity and volume.