The Power of Suzuki Early Childhood Education

I have heard about the magic of Suzuki Early Childhood Education (SECE) classes for years, but I really saw it when I started attending SECE with my two year old. Before we started, I read that SECE would help my son with patience, vocabulary, and rhythm, and it has. But more importantly, it has given us a shared language.

The songs and rhymes that we have learned together in SECE have become the soundtrack to our day. We sing them together while we wait in line at the post office. We sing them together while we drive home late at night from grandma’s house, as I try desperately to keep him awake so he doesn’t hit a second wind before he’s properly in bed. We sing them at the grocery store to distract him from his impulse to practice his baseball pitch with the produce in the cart.

Our SECE songs have become a great replacement for an ipad. Where once I would have been tempted to pull out a game or show on my phone to entertain for a few minutes, we can sing quietly to each other. (Yes, it is a little embarrassing to be heard singing “To market, to market to buy a fat pig” as we walk through the grocery store.)

SECE has helped me parent the way my parents and grandparents naturally did. Yes, I could have done this without attending SECE once a week, but I wasn’t. When we go to SECE, these are the songs and rhymes that are in our heads, easy to access when he needs ten minutes of entertainment.

We are definitely not the model students in our class. He runs around instead of sitting quietly on my lap. He climbs on top of my head instead of doing the actions. He purposefully sings nonsense sounds instead of the words and looks around to see if anyone will laugh at him. We are hugely distracting.

But at home he quietly sings “Six little ducks” while he splashes in the bathtub or marches with his toys to “Pop goes the weasel.” He lines up his toy cars and counts, “One, two, tie my shoe…”

Attending SECE has given us songs to sing. I didn’t know we needed that, there already is a lot of music in our home. But somehow, learning those songs together has given us something for the two of us to share. It truly has been a little bit of magic.

Has your child attended a Suzuki Early Childhood Education Class?  Are you a SECE teacher?  Please share your thoughts in the comments!  Questions about Suzuki Early Childhood Education?  Please share those too!