At Cornell's Early Childhood Center (ECC), the sound of music reverberates throughout the day, all in the name of fun, creative expression and brain development.

These musical sounds at the center, which emphasizes both education and research, might be teachers using chants to move children through the day, the sound of an outdoor chime, bell or jumbo drum on the playground, or maybe it is children playing authentic musical instruments in the classrooms or listening or responding to recorded music from diverse cultures. The sounds are all part of the Early Childhood Music Project at the ECC, located in the Department of Human Development at Cornell.

"We've always known that music is great for kids, but now research shows that music should be an essential part of early childhood. It's fun, creative and it's a proven way to develop areas of the brain for later academic tasks such as reading and math," says Elizabeth Stilwell, ECC director.

"Yet, in many early childhood programs, music is not an integral part of the program. If teachers aren't comfortable with music, they usually don't use much music throughout the day, she says." "In our program, if doesn't matter if a teacher is musically talented or not. The focus is not on musical performance, but instead on encouraging teachers to provide opportunities for children to use music as an active part of their play and exploration."

The child's brain is no longer compared to a sponge ready to soak up new information, but to a 3-D dot-to-dot, she says. The dots are neurons that are connected by a variety of active early experiences or the connections are eventually lost. Music is a way to "connect the dots," and early musical experiences can dramatically enhance a child's ability to acquire language, vocabulary and sensory motor skills, spatial reasoning, logic and rhythmic skills, Stilwell says.

For example, research has shown that young children who participated in a music training program increased their spatial intelligence by almost 50 percent compared with children who participated in non-musical activities; they experienced about a 6 percent increase.

On a typical morning at the center, which has 30 children ranging in age from 3 to 5, teachers might make up chants with a drum to tell their preschoolers to clean up or get ready for circle time. "Now it's time to clean up," (rap a tap a tap tap). The teachers pause, repeat their drum chant, then help the children echo the chant back.

At recess, the children pour into the Soundscape, a playground that integrates more than a dozen musical instruments and sound toys amid swings and tunnels. The preschoolers can play a giant marimba -- a wooden xylophone -- work out a tune out with jumbo chimes, ring the various Tibetan bells hung on tree branches, bang the thunder drum -- a large table-size drum that the children and teachers pound with giant drumsticks made from large dowels with tennis balls on the ends. They might also beat on African drums to send messages across the playground.

The ECC launched the music project with a $50,000 gift from alumna Margaret Mitchell, Cornell '47. In addition to transforming the playground, the gift funded a set of authentic musical instruments from around the world for each classroom. The children can choose from marimbas, shaker eggs (hollow wooden eggs filled with pebbles), tom-tom drums, African tongue slit drums or Latino percussion instruments called afusche casaba or kokoriko.

"Early childhood programs, though, do not need a lot of money to better integrate music into their program," Stilwell points out. "It doesn't cost a cent to use the chant/response format, for example, to ease transitions during the day or to help the children express feelings.

"One child, for example, came back from a doctor's appointment very subdued. She couldn't talk about what was bothering her. Instead, she used one of the gathering drums in the classroom to make a chant. She found a way to communicate what she had experienced and to vent her anger by chanting, 'Went to the doctor. . .had to get a shot. . .ouch ouch ouch! I hate shots!' The other children echoed each line as she chanted," Stilwell said.

The preschoolers also are exposed to recorded music from different cultures at various times of the day, such as classical music while working at an easel, Louis Armstrong during a snack or music from the movie "The Lion King" during drama play, acting out animals. The selections, ranging from "Fiddler on the Roof" and other Broadway shows to music by Duke Ellington and Billie Holiday to children's classics from the around the world, are in the center's lending library.

Children also work on making up new lyrics to old melodies. At parent conferences, teachers make a point to discuss a child's rhythmic or musical responses to raise awareness in parents of the importance of music and sound in their children's development.