Connecting the Dots Between Music and Self-regulation

In this episode of the Learn Play Thrive podcast, we welcome Amelia, former Early Learning Music Specialist at International Grammar School and founder of Rhymey. After witnessing firsthand how intentional musical moments can instantly transform classroom energy—bringing focus, emotional regulation, and deep connection to young children—Amelia launched Rhymey to bridge the growing gap in early childhood music education. As tertiary courses move away from traditional music pedagogy, Amelia's hands-on travelling workshops equip educators with practical, science-backed strategies to confidently reintroduce music into their daily routines.

This episode dives into the neuroscience of music and explore how its three core pillars—beat, singing, and movement—help organise the brain, activate the vagus nerve, and build self-regulation skills in young learners. Amelia challenges us to embrace "musical flexibility" and authenticity over perfection -- viewing music not as a stage performance or a simple Spotify time-filler, but as an accessible, everyday language.

Tune in to discover simple ways to take music off its pedestal, simplify your approach with the "one song, many ways" formula, and harness the power of sound to create calmer, more connected learning environments.

Find out more:
www.rhymey.com.au
https://www.instagram.com/rhymey_earlychildhoodmusic/
https://www.facebook.com/p/Rhymey-Music-based-PD-for-childrens-self-regulation-61574419215247/

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Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:01

Welcome to Learn Play Thrive the podcast, the ultimate early learning podcast for educators and leaders in the sector. Let's learn, play, and thrive together.

SPEAKER_00 0:11

The Learn Play Thrive podcast was recorded on the land with the Dark and Jung people. We pay our respects to the traditional custodians, past, present, and emerging. Hands up, hands down, clear on dark and jungle land.

SPEAKER_02 0:24

Welcome listeners to Learn Play Thrive the podcast. We're diving deep into the heart of early childhood education and care and the inspirational educators, researchers, and sector leaders who make it happen. I'm your host, Simone Brand. Today we're welcoming back one of our wonderful previous guests, Amelia Scarf from Rhymey, an early childhood educator and music specialist with a longstanding passion for using music to enrich children's learning and well-being. Amelia's love for early childhood music education deepened during her time at International Grammar School, IGS, where she worked as the early learning music specialist. Here she developed and delivered music programs for children aged 3 to 5 and saw firsthand just how powerful music can be in shaping child's day. Whether it was helping children listen more deeply, settle their bodies, express emotion, or move with creativity and purpose. Music quickly became her most reliable tool in the classroom. She noticed that even a short burst of musical activity could shift the entire atmosphere, bringing calm, focus, and a sense of togetherness that supported rich, meaningful learning. In 2024, Amelia launched Rhymey to share this understanding with other educators. Rhymey is a traveling workshop that brings practical, face-to-face professional development for educators all around the state of New South Wales. Through hands-on sessions that blend music and science, Amelia shows educators how music can support children's nervous system, strengthen their development, and create classrooms that feel connected and calm. Her work is driven by a simple belief. When educators know how to use music with intention, the impact on children is profound. Welcome Amelia to Learn Play Thrive the podcast.

SPEAKER_01 1:59

Thanks for having me, Simone.

SPEAKER_02 2:00

Lovely to have you here. Great to be here. Thank you for those warm-up tips before we've started today. You're gonna have a great voice now for this one. Why thank you so much. We are seeing a landscape in the sector where the emphasis on music in tertiary studies has dropped off the radar, leaving us with a widening gap between the golden era of music bags and the current reality of students having limited exposure to music pedagogy. How is Rhymey bridging that gap to help educators embed music in their early education programs?

SPEAKER_01 2:30

I love that you say the golden era of teaching and tertiary studies and the music bags because I think it was my second year out of university. I did one year at the Gordon Community Preschool, which is a community-based preschool up in the upper north shore of New South Wales. I was surrounded by women, just very experienced educators who came from that golden era of studies where it was basically from the, I'd say from the 70s all the way to the 90s, maybe early 2000s. They were walking out of their universities, their diplomas, their certificates with such a wide variety of musical repertoire. And music back then, it was put really at the forefront of all teaching philosophy. It was you was highlighted as one of the best languages that children used to make sense of the world. It was, it had such a strong spotlight on it, music, right? So they understood and they recognized its importance at the time. And so essentially those music bags, they're just, if you can imagine, like a little calico drawstring bag, it was full of different tools, different toys, different pictures, all of which would prompt a title of a nursery rhyme. So if there was a little toy spider, the Insy Wincy Spider, things like that. They were just so readily available in every classroom there at Gordon. You could pick it out. A child would have the opportunity to pick out an object or a toy or a picture, and then they'd sing the song. It was just so much, it was second skin. It was part of their day. So now though, we're fast-forwarding 2010s, 2020s. Tertiary studies just don't hold the same regard to music as it once used to. There was a joint select committee on arts and music education training in New South Wales, which is basically it's an inquiry and a report on arts and music education training in New South Wales. And it was done in 2024, so two years ago. And they reported that the Australian Catholic University, which is a highly esteemed university, noted that since 2021, primary and educate, primary and early childhood, primary undergraduate and master of teaching pre-service teachers study only one compulsory core unit, which covers dance, drama, music, and visual art. So they're throwing it all into one unit. So music could probably be spent maybe two or three weeks on across the entire four, three-year degree, which is in the scheme of things, it's so small. And it makes me think, well, what are they actually learning? You know, what are they getting out of it? So how much child-appropriate music are they walking away with? And for the people that are running these courses or these units, how much do they know about music? And do they understand the importance and the benefit behind it for a child's body, their brain, their nervous system? So we just don't know. And from men, you've got they're walking out of these tertiary institutions, these private colleges, these tapes. They go then into the profession. They have very limited, maybe limited, or they don't know where to start when it comes to music in early childhood. Therefore, the children walk away from those services, going into kindergarten, they can't even keep a beat. So it's this big domino effect we're seeing at the moment. And it's really painting a picture of how music is currently perceived toward our students and future educators in this profession. So Rhymey was born out of my desire to change the way that music is currently seen in early childhood. And so by stripping it back to the basics, i.e., the songs that so many of us already know and love, I'm bridging this gap between those who can and do and those who just don't know where to begin. Yeah. So not only am I taking it back to basics, but I'm also showing educators all the possibilities that come with just one song. So I constantly say one song many ways, one song many ways. I'll go into that shortly. And I'm also backing all of this with the science, which is trying to explain how simplicity in music has the literal ability to change the neural pathways in the brain and create karma children. So that's where that regulation piece comes in.

SPEAKER_02 6:23

How can educators use three pillars of music, like beat, singing, and movement, to help regulate young children's brains and bodies in early learning services?

SPEAKER_01 6:31

So rhymey is all about helping educators understand the importance of a structured music experience. So when you say the three pillars of music, beat, singing, and movement, they are what I believe, what create a structured music experience. So beat, using beat to organize and synchronize the brain to the body. Then there's singing or vocal sounds. So things even like blowing raspberries, making sirens, humming, laughing is even a vocal sound. That's where low frequency vibrations are activating the vagus nerve, and the vagus nerve supports the nervous system to lead to the calm alert state. And then there's movement, like you said, strengthening the inhibitory control, which is leading children, how learning, teaching them how to self-regulate. So these three key components. I mean, I could talk for hours about the science and the research behind the how and the why they regulate, but for now, the how is really quite easy. So if we talk about beat, you can create your own list of all the different ways you can make a beat on your body. For example, clapping, tapping your knees, stomping, jumping, nodding your head, tapping your hands, tapping your feet. That's all parts of making a beat. And then you can apply these to any well-known song that you know and the children love. And to elevate, that's how you're elevating the song into a multi-sensory experience. So, for example, a song like come on, everyone, come on everyone, come on everyone, clap with me, or nod with me, or stomp with me. That's one song, many ways, right? So that's one example. And then we move to singing. So as I mentioned, singing activates the vagus nerve, which directly supports self-regulation and it leads children and adults into the calm alert state. So you could start by singing a call of call and response song, such as, Are you listening? The children can sing, yes we are, just as one example, which will encourage language and self-soothing through melody and through repetition. You could also grab some colourful scarves and let them mimic the melodic contours. So if you're doing something like we and you're going up and down like a mountain, the children can mimic that as well. I know I can't, they can't sing to do this on the podcast. You're drawing a rainbow. Or you could do lip trills, so things like blowing raspberries and put a scarf in the air and watch it fall to the ground. So you could throw the scarf up and then as it falls to the ground, all these are such simple ways to activate the vagus nerve. It doesn't always need to be singing. I'm not expecting every educator in Australia to have an operatic voice or to sound like Whitney Houston.

SPEAKER_02 9:00

And children don't really mind if you sing and you don't have the best of voice. That's right. Well, it's all about you're activating these complex. Sometimes they smile at me in an interesting way.

SPEAKER_01 9:09

Well really going there. It's about you're using complex speech sounds that you children cannot possibly get from speaking. So it maybe, yes, everyone can sing, but not everyone can sing well in inverted comments or in tune. But at such a young age, children don't really mind, and they actually gravitate more to a singing voice than to your boring old monotone speaking voice.

SPEAKER_02 9:31

There's so much importance. I know that we've brushed over the importance of music, singing, and movement in the early years, but there is such correlation towards language but also the IQ and the developing brain into that formal schooling that can be started at such a young age in such a fun way. And the repetition of this is what gets the child into that space where they're connecting those neural pathways, creating that great matter. That's right, places that need to cross over.

SPEAKER_01 9:57

Yes. High cognitive load. High cognitive load being repetition. I always say if you can start your day with some sort of beat activity, so tapping to a song on your knees, you are connecting or synchronizing the three major brain cortices, the brain structures, which I'll talk about in a moment. And then the third one was movement. So when I think of movement and music, I think of you're activating or strengthening your inhibitory control muscle. And so the inhibitory control is like a muscle in your body, it's a part of your executive functioning skills. And I say, you know, inhibitory control is a muscle, and music is its gym. So no matter what you're doing in a structured music experience, if you're using beat, singing, and movement simultaneously throughout whatever you're doing, you are in some way getting children to activate and strengthen their inhibitory control. So it's naturally infused in all musical experiences, and therefore so is movement, right? So any stop, think, go activities, musical statues is your standard, but if you want to use it with more intention, there's plenty of songs out there that already have the pauses put within. So you can create different movements and things based on knowing that the pauses are coming up. Yeah, things like I'm a train that goes and I go and go until I stop. Those songs have naturally infused pauses throughout them. They're all just wonderful ways to test the children's ability to stop, think, and go. So they're the three, I guess, cornerstones of how a structured music experience can be made up. Nice.

SPEAKER_02 13:01

Let's now explore the concept of musical flexibility, which is creating a best spoke menu for the needs of individual children rather than just looking for the right song on Spotify. How can educators be flexible around music and effectively use it as another language to help children make sense of their world?

SPEAKER_01 13:17

Well, let's first be clear. Sometimes finding the right song on Spotify is sometimes all that a child may need. I mean, if you think of us as adults, you know, Spotify, Apple Music, all these major streaming platforms, they are geared to create playlists based on moods, based on routines. You know, you've got dinner party playlists, meditation playlists. So there are songs that immediately activate the nervous system in a certain way to a sense of calm. I know there's certain songs in my back pocket that I'll go to if I'm feeling stressed and it helps me regulate. However, I don't, I always suggest for educators not to lean on Spotify completely because the child may be missing out on the proper co-regulation, which is also involved in emotional connection and emotional bonding. And sometimes if you're just putting a song on and walking away, they're not receiving that proper, intense, you know, authentic co-regulation, which is all about emotional bonding. And emotional bonding, hugging, rocking side to side, tapping their back, that is regulation. And sometimes we miss that through Spotify. But let's highlight music flip musical flexibility and what that's all about in relation to the zones of regulation. So the zones of regulation, the way I see it, it's like a spectrum. And on either end, you've got the red and blue zone. So the either external, so the really intense high dysregulation, the red zone, and then the internalization of behavior. So the blue zone, which is a bit more anxiety. So they're your two sort of extremes. You've got yellow zone, which I believe sits on either side of the green zone, because the yellow zone is like that, oh, things, the wheels are starting to come off, but you could either go blue or you could go red. And then the green zone sits in the middle, which is all about, you know, the optimal window of arousal, the green zone, the calm alert state. So if you're tapping into the behaviors of the child or children at any given moment, you're able to quickly gauge where they're at and what they may need. Quite often, if you're regulating a whole group, you're thinking they're going to be sitting in that yellow zone. But if you're co-regulating, you know very well they're either in the red zone or the blue zone. So I would say that if you're looking at a child leading towards the red zone or a child leading towards the blue zone, your musical tool or your response to the child's needs will be very different depending on where they're heading. So, i.e., their music experience or the music experience you're about to do will look very different depending on where you think the child or group of children is heading. So if we're looking more broadly, we might use larger gross motor songs such as, you know, head, shoulders, knees and toes, or row your boat with lyra, as using it as a tug of war if you've got a piece of lyra and you back and forth. For children who are needing that pick me up or tapping into their active listening skills or body coordination. So that's more, that's that yellow zone part. Or we might need to focus more on deep breathing. So thinking about a lullaby, finger play songs such as Twinkle Little Star, open shut them, to center children into smaller movements and it's more of that gentle, softer singing. So if we're thinking about those larger gross modar, we know okay, they need that extra, they need that to shake, almost shake their sillies out, yeah, and bring them back in through active listening. But if we've got children that are heightened in terms of maybe anxiety, they're worried, they're scared, they're sad, that's when you're going to be doing the whispering, you know. Twinkle, a lot of deep breathing, finger play, a bit more smaller movements. Is that making sense? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So that's that whole one song many ways will come in here and taking those parts, these songs off onto many different tangents, right? So if we look at, you know, twinkle as a whisper or a humming, you could that's beautiful. But then you could look at head, shoulders, knees, and toes, and you could say, okay, well, we're not gonna say heads, we're gonna say shoulders, knees and that's the active listening skills, yeah, being activated. So once we tap into the children's sensory needs or their sensory diet, i.e., what individual child needs to help them regulate, we begin to see what their nervous system or their bodies and their brains are craving, and we can incorporate music as another language to show them more opportunities and tools of how to regulate their own nervous system.

SPEAKER_02 17:17

So, our key takeaway messages, we have one theory-based, one practical, and one inspiring. What would be your theory-based takeaway for us today?

SPEAKER_01 17:25

My theory-based comes from the wonderful Dr. Anita Collins. She is a, she's my guru personally, but she's all about music and neuroscience. And she explains so wonderfully about the music learning and language learning. They travel along the same neural pathways in the brain. So, i.e., the more you develop through music, the faster language can develop. This is really important for educators to understand that how important if a child can demonstrate a steady beat on their body by the time they're three. So, say if they can tap a beat on their knees or on a table or on a drum by the time they're three, they are fast-tracked to learn to read by the time they're five. And that's because the two of them, language learning and beat learning or music learning, they travel along the same neural pathways. They learn the exact same way. It's like a muscle. The more you practice it, the stronger it's gonna be. That's right, that's right. So it's a tr technical, the way Dr. Anita Collins explains it, it's a triangle of brain structures. So you've got your auditory, you're listening, your visual, your sight, and your motor, your body. They're the foundation upon which most other learning later in life and through school and thing, most other learning actually occurs. So it's important for things like sensory processing information. So children who struggle with this connectivity of the auditory, visual, and motor, they're more than likely to have a delayed acquisition of speech and it flows onto things like reading and writing. So they used both in motion for both reading and music. If we have time, I could talk about how they actually work. Let's go. Yeah, I've loved it. So unpack it. So a beat, for example, if we're keeping a beat, you're keeping a beat on your body. If you look at the audit the visual, you're seeing the beat happen. So if you're seeing the beat, you're seeing the gaps of the beat, the silences in between, right? You can hear the beat through your auditory. Visual, you're seeing the beat, and then your motor, you have to literally practice, train your body how to lift your hand up, how far is it lifting up, and to what force it's coming down. They're the three brain coordination, coordination, yeah, working simultaneously. When it comes to reading, if you've got the word ker at cat on a board or on your page, a child looks at the C, they see it as a shape, visual, they're seeing it. Auditory, they have to recall how it sounds, and then their motor, they have to train their mouth to make that sound. K, k. And then they've got to do it with ah and t. And then it works overtime to blend and create cat. So it's they learn the exact same way. Yes, it looks different because beat is one thing, learning to read is another, but the brain computes it and absorbs it the exact same way. That's how they're that's how interlinked they are. So brain, beat learning and learning to read are along the same highway in the brain. It's very interesting. Yeah, very fabulous for processing information, yeah. And practical. What's a practical element that we could take away today? Well, I say it time and time again in my workshops, one song many ways. I often tell educators, look at music as a formula. So, quite simple example would be something like Ram Sam. We all know the actions, Ramsam, you beat your hands together, rolling your arms, and then ha Rafi, you put your hands in the air. We were taught that way, sure. And sure, other educators were taught differently, but how about we pull it apart and put it back together? Instead of beating your fists together for Ram Sam, what else can we do? Instead of rolling your hands for goolly-ghoulie, what else can we do? You know, we can invite children to improvise and create new movements, therefore making it their own. That song, it's lasted so many years, generations now, because it's never become boring. So, one so many ways. You can take it and make it completely your own, make it completely one child, a group of children. And for them, that's such a great sense of ownership. And that in itself, being a part of something greater than yourself, eliciting that amount of joy. This is my song, that is regulating, right? So if we look at songs as a formula, like you can get a classical piece of music and it might have two different, very polarizing parts of the song, like a very fast part and a very slow part. Create movements to your body that are very fast to reflect the first part of the piece and then slow to reflect the second part. So it's just pulling things apart, looking at as a formula, then you have one song many ways. There's so many different ways you can access just one song. That's how simple a structured music experience can be. And inspiring, inspire us. Oh, inspire. Well, I have a quote by Sammy Cece. If you can speak, you can sing. So we don't look at these musical moments as a stage performance ever. We are not auditioning for Australia's Got Talent. We are not all professional singers. That's not what we came into this profession to do. I understand that, but we are relishing in the process. The learning, the calming, the uplifting elements. We're not looking at the product. It's not a stage performance when we're in front of our children, i.e., how it will sound. We're just taking music off this pedestal. We don't need to access it because you can only sing well or you've learnt an instrument or you have rhythm. It's not about that. We're using it on the same playing field as every other language that children use to make sense of the world. When we look at it as just another language, it can be so much is used so much more intentionally and so much more authentically. And children just love it. I think we just need to take away the fact that music is not a VIP section that only Hollywood can access. No, it's for all of us. It is something. Children do it from as soon as they exit the womb. They sing. They don't care how they sound. Why is it us that we care how we sound? I think it's just society's created this stigma, but it shouldn't happen in this profession. We need to be using it all the time.

SPEAKER_02 22:57

And I really encourage going back to the idea that you've mentioned of educators taking ownership of their repertoire of songs that they can pull from, you know, just their memory, bring to the table, maybe as a team, share your favourite songs and maybe encourage each other to find a new song for different parts of your routine. Maybe it's for mealtimes, maybe it's for transition songs, maybe it's for lullabies at at bedtime. Have a look and see what you can pull in to Rhymey and find those quality songs that are going to help ignite that triangular processing ability for the children and then share it with your team and practice it.

SPEAKER_01 23:32

And I love what you say, share it with your team. I always say lean on others. If you're scared to sing alone, we're never alone with children. You can lean on the educators around you. Sing together, learn to be silly. We all we work with children. We have to be silly. You know, it's we're just shaking out that anxiety or that stage fright we have around singing. It shouldn't be, it shouldn't exist, really. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 23:53

Well, thank you so much for coming on to the podcast. It's been super fun singing, dancing, and all things music with you today. And yeah, thank you so much for your time. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it. Thank you for joining us on this episode of Learn Playthrive the podcast. We hope you found inspiration and valuable insights to fuel your journey in early childhood education. Remember the key to fostering learning, promoting play, and empowering young minds lies with your dedication and creativity. Stay connected between episodes by following us on Instagram at learnplaythrive underscore and join the conversation on Facebook at LearnPlaythrive Australia. If you've enjoyed today's episode, please like, subscribe, rate, or review our podcast on your favourite platform. Your feedback helps us to continue to deliver content that resonates with you. And don't forget to visit us at our website at learnplaythrive.com.au for additional resources, blog posts, and professional development opportunities. Until next time, keep learning, keep playing, and keep thriving. We'll see you in the next episode of Learn Playthrive the podcast.