Fun learning with the MADAcademy franchise

MAD Academy is a provider of music and movement classes for babies, toddlers and preschool children

Young children are not getting the opportunities they need to develop important listening skills, according to a recent article by Robert Watts in Right Start magazine.

Watts has been exploring why listening skills are important for young children and what we should be doing to help.These days children are exposed to so many toys and gadgets that tend to develop visual skills that Watts argues children’s auditory skills are lagging behind because of a lack of opportunity to develop them.

Skill
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As he points out, hearing is an ability we are born with, while listening is a skill we need to learn, and as such parents and educators need to be actively encouraging children to listen and respond to what they have heard.

This view is endorsed by Sir Jim Rose, who conducted a review of primary education in 2009 and concluded that we need to improve the listening skills among young children in school.

Watts recommends that we help toddlers develop good listening skills by giving them lots of eye contact, exaggerating facial and verbal expressions and engaging in lots of music, rhymes, songs and stories.

This is a view strongly endorsed by Helen Harrington, founder of MAD Academy, a provider of music and movement classes for babies, toddlers and preschool children.

**“It is vital that children learn the basis of good listening skills early,” she says.“It’s actually an extremely complicated skill and regular practice is essential. **

**“That’s why MAD Academy classes are designed to include lots of games that encourage children to focus their listening on specific sounds, so that they learn to filter out background noise and respond to what they are hearing.”**