JACKSONVILLE, Fla. - It's an instant education -- set to music.
"Kids at this age, their ears are always turned on," said Phoebe Wyms, whose 20-month-old daughter Amora started learning at the Jacksonville School of the Arts at just four months old.
"I've never seen her so focused," Wyms said of her daughter.
Classically trained pianist Virginia Dill, who runs the school, says her oldest music student is about 80 years old, but the idea of using music specifically to help young children learn and retain useful knowledge came about 20 years ago.
"There was a little three-year-old boy, loved volcanoes, and he said, 'Hey, Miss Virginia, can we sing a song about volcanoes?'" Dill began.
But she couldn't find one, so she wrote one.
"I put information about lava and magma and fault lines in the song," Dill said.
That set off a seismic wave of education-laden songs. Dill said she's written about 2,000 -- many of them set to familiar tunes.
"He's been learning geography, math, the presidents of the United States, the periodic table," said Rosy Pastrana of her two-year-old son Sebastian. Indeed, the toddler could be seen and heard singing all the presidents' names in order, from Washington to Trump.
Pastrana also has a six-year-old boy who attends the school. She said her sons' activity at the school has not only stocked them with knowledge but a curiosity they take with them.
"My older son will be like, 'So, what does it mean to be a president?'" she said, crediting his learning in Dill's studio.
I asked: "So, the dinner table conversation is very different from what it would be?"
"Oh, my gosh, yes, absolutely!" she beamed.
Dill said there are scientifically proven reasons for the children's success.
"Sung language is processed, stored and generated in different and more parts of the brain than spoken language," she said.
Wyms, like other parents, initially brought little Amora to the school for musical reasons.
"They had the periodic table out and everything. I was like, 'How is that possible for a four-month-old?'" she recalled.
She now has long since been convinced.
"If you're constantly singing The Wheels On The Bus, they're going to start turning those wheels," she said. "But if you're singing the periodic table, then you're like, 'Hydrogen-H' -- that's what they pick up on!"
"She's getting leaps-and-bounds ahead of what I was able to get because this is stuff I was learning in high school," said Jeanne Vinci.
Vinci, whose 16-month-old grandson Oliver is thriving at the school, confessed that it's also a fun refresher for the grown-ups who attend along with the children.
"I have to admit," she said delighted, "last night I was studying up on my presidents! And I have a periodic table right next to my bed!"
Pastrana said she catches Sebastian singing the catchy songs at home, and while she acknowledges that he might not know what all the words mean, the time in life that he's learning them is meaningful.
"Sometimes he just sings the songs in his crib," she said. "And, I just look at him in the monitor and he's singing all these songs."
Indeed, the subject matter - ranging from anatomy to zoology - sounds like a syllabus for kids and young adults much older than the infants and toddlers who were going through the paces during our visit. Given that the little boy who requested a volcano song years ago is now a young adult, all that melodic recitation is getting reviews: Virginia said she occasionally hears from kids she taught as babies.
"Hey, Miss Virginia, guess what?" she recalls from a recent email, "I can still sing the chemistry song and I didn't have to study for my organic chemistry test in college!"
The Jacksonville School of the Arts is located at 12525 Philips Highway (near Old St. Augustine Road).
For information, call 757-717-7187 or click here.