Your baby learns through repetition, and hearing songs again and again supports their developing skills and abilities. Singing with your baby has many benefits, including building your relationship. Sharing action songs with them is a great way to play and interact with your baby, plus they’re great for developing their fine motor skills. Songs with actions are also fantastic for fine and gross motor development, as well as visual tracking skills.
Your baby will watch your movements
When you share an action song with your baby, they’ll watch closely as your lips, arms, hands and fingers move. They’ll enjoy seeing your body move, and as they become more familiar with the songs, words and moves, they will be likely to join in with the fun!
Many action songs feature finger actions, as well as upper and lower body movements. For now, your baby will watch as you play out the actions with fingers and hands but in time, they will start to copy your movements.
Making links to their own actions
When your baby watches you move to music, research suggests that this helps their brain link your movements to their own, which then helps them to understand which body parts to move.[1,2] Moving in this way develops coordination of their hands and hand-eye coordination.
As your baby gains more control of their movements, they might start to clap their hands together in response. This is an exciting moment for both of you!
Listening to songs and music naturally encourages movement, which is why action songs are perfect for your baby’s fine motor skills.
References:
[1] J.N. Saby, A.N. Meltzoff, P.J. Marshall. (2013). Infants’ Somatotopic Neural Responses to Seeing Human Actions: I’ve Got You under My Skin. Published: October 30, 2013. Available from https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0077905
[2] A.N. Meltzoff, P.J. Marshall. (2020). Progress in Brain Research. Chapter 2 - Importance of body representations in social-cognitive development: New insights from infant brain science. Volume 254, 2020, Pages 25-48