This is a nursery that increases the IQ of children by 70%.

“It’s the sound of a boat! shouts two-and-a-half-year-old Ntima, who already has a vocabulary. Full of joy and energy, the little boy jumps on the stuffed crocodile before returning to press one of the buttons on the ‘music bubble’. Here we are at Cap Enfants’ nursery in Levallois-Perret (Hauts-de-Seine). In this kindergarten, he relies heavily on music, sounds and general stimulation of the senses, especially for the development of babies thanks to him. a hemisphere full of sounds.

All blue and round like an igloo, the musical bubble features a wide variety of animal calls, music and everyday sounds, all accompanied by a digital picture book that allows children to associate sounds and shapes and place words more easily. This morning we travel to an exotic country with gazelles and crocodiles, but the bubble also creates sounds associated with this country, especially foreign languages. “Children learn songs from a foreign country every month. The goal is to match sounds they don’t hear every day. The brain will remember these frequencies to use later when learning foreign languages,” explains Ruth Jornod, musicologist and head of music pedagogy at Cap enfants nurseries.

“Fighting Social Determinism”

These healthy trips are linked to other activities, such as preparing recipes from these countries or objects to manipulate: “When we go to Egypt, we touch them with sand,” adds Claudia Kespi-Yahi, founder of innovative kindergartens and author of the book Early childhood: music above all else. Or as soon as you smell the smell of camels now.

And it works, about fifty children from these multisensory kindergartens were tested at the end of the kindergarten experiment by a doctor of psychology and honorary research director from Inserm and compared them with a control group of 20 children from the lambda kindergarten. While the average IQ of a child was 10, these children had an average score of 17, which is 70% higher than the national average. And above all, according to Claudia Kespy-Yahi, the differences between children are less significant than in other kindergartens. Overall, the practice brought a richer vocabulary, improved logical abilities, and better concentration.

“If they had stayed in their classical environment, they would have compensated for the delay they would have experienced, thanks to the bubble and above all the interactions it created. It’s a way of fighting against social determinism,” says Claudia Kespi-Yahi, proud of the mix of CSP+ and poor backgrounds in the nurseries, with many of the nine Cap nurseries eligible for a unique service (PSU). have a discounted rate.

“The universal ear at birth”

Because this project owes a lot to the personality of its founder, half-Austrian and half-French, and he says that he is passionate about “planting the seeds of tolerance” in these children. Claudia Kespy-Yahi, however, does not come from the world of early childhood: she first worked in mass distribution and did humanitarian work before giving birth to children, which was the “triggering factor”. “I discovered the world of kindergartens, and I didn’t look very happy. I brought music CDs to bring joy to life,” he recalls.

Once researching the effects of music on children and digesting hundreds of academic articles, this knowledge-hungry person realizes that “we are born with a universal ear.” “But this is limited very quickly, a 6-month-old child becomes specialized, and at 18 months there are already differences in voice level between children from poor families and others,” he notes.

Municipal kindergartens and hospitals are equipped with balloons

It was this observation that led him, after his Master of Business Administration (MBA), to work on a music cover, initially made by hand by a workshop that made Christmas decorations for Galeries Lafayette or Le Printemps in 2006. food grade resin shell and ready for large scale production.

Today, the music bubble is exported and inspired abroad. The municipalities of Evry, Boulogne and Gennevilliers received some for their early childhood institutions. Recreation centers, kindergartens are equipped with it, and one hospital has already shown interest in young cancer patients. A musical bubble was also presented by the Cité des Sciences for the Cité des sens festival.