Discover RCM Smart Start

A Tiered Curriculum that Grows with the Child
RCM Smart Start is a developmentally-sequenced early childhood music program designed to nurture both cognitive and musical growth from infancy through age 4. Each class is backed by research in early learning and neuroscience and delivers a play-based, arts-integrated experience that fosters curiosity, confidence, and connection.

Discover Why

A Brighter Future for Every Child Starts Here

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Engaging musical activities, movement,
and interactive play

Organized by age group to support children as they reach key developmental milestones. Through engaging musical activities, movement, and interactive play, students build foundational skills across physical, emotional, social, and other important areas — all while exploring the joy of music.

Developed by Leaders in Early Childhood Music

Tailored by age, this program helps children achieve key developmental milestones. Through music, movement, and playful interaction, students develop foundational skills across physical, emotional, social, and other essential domains — all while discovering the joy of music.

Top Three Benefits

  1. Grounded in over 60 years of music education expertise and decades of neuroscience research, RCM Smart Start nurtures children’s foundational skills across physical, emotional, social, and other key areas of development from the very start of their learning journey.

  2.  The age-targeted curriculum fosters growth beyond typical developmental milestones, offering structured, research-based activities tailored to each early childhood age group.

  3. Skilled educators guide children through a rich and diverse repertoire of songs, games, rhymes, and activities, offering a variety of musical experiences that engage, inspire, and delight at every stage of early learning.

Backed by real research

Grounded in science

Developed by Dr. Sean Hutchins, neuroscientist and Director of Research at The Royal Conservatory, and Catherine West, Early Childhood Music Education expert, RCM Smart Start aims to enhance both musical and cognitive skills in young children. 

RCM Smart Start’s curriculum emphasizes and enhances key areas of cognitive development that naturally grow through music-making, including attention, memory, perception, and flexible thinking. The thousands of activities in the program support these skills while also fostering children’s musical learning. 

Research-based curriculum design

RCM Smart Start is grounded in decades of neuroscience research on music training and the developing brain. Studies show that musicians outperform non-musicians in perception, language, spatial reasoning, and IQ, with measurable differences in brain structure and connectivity. Music training strengthens skills like attention, memory, and creativity, which transfer to other areas of learning and life.

Studying RCM Smart Start 

RCM Smart Start was developed in 2014 at The Royal Conservatory’s Marilyn Thomson Early Childhood Education Centre and is offered at the Oscar Peterson School of Music at RCM’s headquarters in Toronto. Since its inception, the organization’s Neuroscience Research Centre has studied participants’ perceptual, linguistic, and cognitive outcomes. 

Studies show long-term benefits, including increased vocabulary, pre-reading ability, phonemic awareness, and musical development over one- and four-year spans. These gains exceed typical developmental progression and reinforce the link between music and cognition. Findings are used to continuously refine the RCM Smart Start curriculum for maximum cognitive and musical impact.