Your Eyes are crossed

I happened across this great blog which I thought would spark the imaginations of your toddlers, preschoolers and young children. It is called Faces in Places and it has pictures of buildings or items that look like faces. Can you and your child go on a face hunt with your digital camera and see how many faces you can find? Email them to me and I will post them on the blog!!!!

The Auditory System - Can you Hear That?

Simply put, the auditory system is the sensory system for the sense of hearing. The auditory system is stimulated when airwaves reach the auditory receptors in the ear. Auditory processing is the ability to perceive, decode and understand sounds. Language development is greatly influenced by the ability to process auditory information.
Of the eight sensory systems, the auditory is the first to become fully functional during gestation, at about 25 weeks. But children can’t listen like adults. Why not? Because the higher auditory brain centers are not fully developed until a child is about 15 years old.
Auditory discrimination is the ability to detect similarities and differences between sounds. Why is this important? For instance, when you have two children and call to one by name, you expect Jack to appear, not his sister Olivia. Children also need to be able to respond to sounds that signal danger, like a smoke alarm or a car horn. Before children can begin to read, they must first learn to discriminate between the sounds associated with different letters (phenomic awareness). As well, they must have the ability to hear and manipulate the sounds that make up words (phonological awareness).
So, a two year old may recognize the sound of a dog. But if two dogs were barking at the same time, the child may not be able to tell you if the barks were the same or if they sound different. This is why we use simple instruments and acapella voices in the Kindermusik classroom much of the time. Young children do not have the ability to filter sounds and know what to attend to.
The development of auditory discrimination can not be pushed. However, researchers tell us that as parents and educators, we can provide activities that assist in assuring development of this vital skill. Researchers also say that listening, singing and dancing to music, as well as playing musical instruments are the best ways to stimulate the auditory system.
Here’s some of the auditory discrimination activities you’ll find in a Kindermusik classroom, as well as some to do at home:

Village/Newborn to 18 months:

Vocal play. Vocal play involves the babbling that babies speak, and the natural response from parents. When your baby babbles, you’ll likely repeat back to them what they just said. That’s exactly what you should be doing! Then, wait for your baby to respond. Give them an opportunity to continue the “conversation”. A baby must see your mouth and facial expressions during vocal play in order for them to be able to mimic the physical process of speech.

Our Time/18 months to 3.5 years:

Active Listening. We spend time almost every class playing sounds from the CD’s in class, and identifying them. Children have to learn individual sounds before they can discriminate two sounds that are occurring at the same time.

Imagine That/3.5 to 5 years:

Layered sounds in active listening. It is at this age where we begin to layer sounds. For instance, a “fountain” will play on the CD. It is identified by the children. The fountain sound plays again and identified, and a bicycle bell is added and named. Layering sounds in this manner helps children to begin to attend to individual sounds in a multi-sound environment. We also begin to listen to the sounds of individual instruments.

Young Child/5 to 7 years:

Symphonic instruments. Now children have become a bit more sophisticated in their listening skills. Your child might hear and identify all the individual solo instruments in Peter and the Wolf, and then listen to the music of Peter and the Wolf. As each solo instrument begins to play on top of the orchestral background, your child will become adept at singling out the clarinet, or violin part. You can do the same thing at home with pieces such as The Magic Flute, or Carnival of the Animals, or The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra.

Here are some auditory-stimulating activities for you to do at home:

**Listen to your CD’s, of course! All the active listening sounds are on your CD’s.
In the car (you’ll have a captive audience!), play a lot of “What does the ____ say?”. (telephone, cow, horn, clock, rooster) You can even do this before your child can give a response! Just ask the question, and then say, “The sheep says ‘baaaa’”. They can learn to recognize sounds before they can say them. And then one day, you’ll be surprised when a “baaaa” comes out of your little ones’ mouth!
**Talk to your child and let her talk back to you in different intensities of voice: softer, louder and with different intonations. Speak or sing in a high pitched voice and then a low pitched voice and ask her to imitate you.
**Auditory hide and seek. Hide, and then call to your child. See if he can find you by following your voice. Children as young as crawlers LOVE this game!
Play musical statues with your children. Play music and dance. When you stop the music they must freeze like statues.
**Clap a rhythm and ask your child to imitate it. Repeat with your backs to each other so that she cannot see you clap.
**Sing to your baby acapella. He want to hear his mother’s voice (and his father’s voice, too). He’s been listening to it since utero. It is the most comforting sound to him.

Early Experiences with Music Prepare Children

“Early experiences with music that are successful and fun prepare
children to be successful in other areas of learning, particularly
math.”* Research is showing that music has the power to jump-
start your child’s brain, including triggering the areas of the brain
used for mathematics.

Why? Like your toddler, music doesn’t stand still. When your child
plays an instrument or listens to a catchy tune, her brain is
constantly being challenged to process and make sense of the tune
and the rhythm.

What’s great is that all that neurological exercise can be playful
and fun! The activities in Kindermusik classes have been carefully
constructed to leverage all the findings from the latest and
greatest scientific research on the links between music and math.
So, how does that work?


GEOMETRY: Space and Shapes

What is it?

Geometry before age three? You bet! Toddlers learn geometry
through their eyes, hands, and bodies as they crawl through
tunnels, run around corners, and stack boxes. Your little
explorer gains spatial sense as she experiences how her body
moves in relation to objects and structures in the world. As she
moves “my body” and “my things”, she starts to show her
understanding of location and position by using or understanding
words like on, off, under, below, in and out, and of distance by
using words like near, far, and next to.

Geometry concepts keep popping up as your child explores objects
that are different shapes. As he plays with blocks, your child learns
that some objects are similar to others in their shapes: some are
rounded, some have corners; some fit under the door, some get
stuck! Just past the age of three, your child may begin to represent
shapes as visual images in his mind, and then move them around
mentally. This is called spatial-temporal reasoning, and is
important not just for chess champions, but for math and science
understanding too.


As your toddler gets toward preschool age, scientists say you’ll see
some surprising benefits of making music. Children who participate
in music instruction, including Kindermusik classes, show stronger
spatial-temporal reasoning skills than those without music
instruction. Research shows that with training, even children as
young as two can demonstrate surprisingly advanced skills in the
area of spatial reasoning.

What is it about music instruction that improves these specific
geometry skills? In your toddler’s brain, certain neurons are
actively firing as she plays rhythms on the drum. The same brain
pathways that are created by this music-making are used for
more complex spatial-temporal geometry tasks.


What You Can Do at Home


* Yummy Shapes. Point out the shapes around your kitchen
or dining room, especially those on your toddler’s plate.
Point out the round banana slice or triangle-shaped tortilla
wedge. Or, offer your child the choice of square or triangular
toast pieces.

* Dance, Dance, Dance. Use scarves or streamers to wave
in and out, near and far. Sing out the words, then see if
your child can be the dance teacher telling you what to do.

* Rainy Day Playground. Encourage your toddler to climb
over and under pillows and cardboard boxes and sheets turned
into tunnels. See how her body fits in these new creative spaces!!
—
* Sawyers, K. & Hutson-Brandhagen, J. (2004). Music and Math: How do we make the connection for preschoolers? Child Care Information Exchange, July/August 2004. For all other reference citations and a full version of this paper, please visit us at www.kindermusik.com/benefits.