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Check out these pictures from my Kindermusik classes. We have a blast and make unforgettable memories. The multi sensory learning is incredible.

Great Young Children Craft Blog

I found an awsome blog for creative, educational and fun crafts. If you have a crafty child, this is the place for you. Click here and have fun.

Pretend play fosters life-long creativity

The July 10th issue of Newsweek affirms what we at Kindermusik already knew - pretend play fosters life-long creativity. By encouraging creative behavior often throughout childhood and adulthood, neurological patterns change in the brain to make problem-solving faster and better. You are improving children’s problem-solving abilities and creativity every time you do an instrument exploration (What is another way you can play the sticks?), a role play with movement (How else can you move like a monkey?), and when you introduce new props (What else could this hoop be?). Participation in Kindermusik class fosters the development of creativity and problem solving! You can count on Kindermusik to keep those creative juices flowing!

The Creativity Crisis, by Po Bronson & Ashley Merryman; Newsweek 7/10/2010

A Nation of Wimps

I was listening to an interesting podcast a couple of nights ago. It was so thought-provoking that I couldn’t fall asleep afterwards. The question discussed was: “Are we raising a nation of wimps?”
By this, the commentators proposed that children are not learning the coping skills which lead to independence. Their childhood is nice and clean and safe, but they are psychologically fragile later on when they leave for college.

Does a sanitized childhood turn a kid into a wimp?

It’s a scientific fact that if you are not exposed to enough “adversity” in the form of germs, your body doesn’t develop immunities. Is this a metaphor for what happens psychologically? The commentators proposed the idea that adversity enables our children able to meet the normal challenges of life as they grow up.


For instance, the crime rate is actually lower than when we were young, but parents these days are hyper-aware of all the potential “bad” things that can happen to their children. And that perhaps we unnecessarily “over-protect” our children because if something “bad” does happen to a child, parents are blamed for it. (If you hadn’t let her go rock climbing, she wouldn’t have broken her arm. Or worse, if you hadn’t allowed him to walk alone to school, he wouldn’t have been abducted.)

Are my own fears holding me back from doing what is best for my child’s development into independence?

Like every parent, I worry. (Will it hurt them, scare them, be too hard, cause them to fail?) Especially so when I became a parent for the first time. I think my oldest Nathan is now far less self-sufficient than his siblings because I was there most every moment, doing it for him, solving the problems, finding the solutions, mediating the play dates.

But my job as a parent is to teach my children to take smart risks. How to decide what is a good risk. What makes a poor risk. Train them about what should be avoided altogether. Risk management – yes. Risk elimination – no.

Of course, the level of risk is dependent on your child’s maturity, temperament, personality, strengths and weaknesses. Risks should be different for every child. You need to know your child in order to train them well.

The nitty-gritty practical.

So how does this idea of allowing adversity in the form of good risks play out? Here are some ideas:

Let your children make mistakes. Have them to fix the mistakes themselves. Even if it takes several attempts to do so. They’ll learn far more than if you do it for them. Even a toddler can clean up something they’ve spilled. Even if it is NOT the way you’d do it. (Are you gritting your teeth yet? I know I am!)

For school-aged children, allow them organize their own time. Do they really need you to decide if they should empty the dishwasher, have a snack or do their homework first? (Of course, you’ve already taught them what the consequences are for not doing chores or homework. Children need to learn to manage their tasks and time, and this is a good way to help them become more independent. Cause seriously, eventually someone who didn’t birth them and love them unconditionally will be their boss!)

Allow your children to play freely unmonitored with other children without the grownups intervening. The kids will work out the problems! (I don’t mean never check on them. But we adults often step into the middle of conflict far too soon.)

Encourage them to try new things. For one child, that may be finally raising her hand in class. For another, learning to dress himself, even if it is a struggle to work those little hands and legs. (And yes, it’s faster and easier if you put the clothes on, and they’ll match and not be on backwards. But don’t lose sight of the goal – independence. Help them get there one step at a time. Just don’t do the steps for them!)

Doing these things actually fosters brain development in the part of the brain where “executive functioning” occurs. This is the portion of the brain (the pre-frontal cortex for you brain anatomy lovers out there) where planning and decision making occur.

Recently, I was on the phone for nearly an hour with the HP customer service department located in some third world country (very annoying, but another blog!) when my 11 year old Nathan kept interrupting and wanting me to cut him some watermelon. I kept shooing him away. Funnily enough, when I got off the phone, I discovered that he had cut his own watermelon. It was a hack job, but that really didn’t matter. He had faced adversity, and solved his own problem. I never have to slice watermelon for him again. But I had trained him to use a knife previously – risk management. Risk elimination – no. He could have cut himself. But he used a steak knife. He knows better than to use a butcher knife.

If you’d like to listen to the podcast, you can find it on BamRadio Network.

-posted by Miss Luanne with thanks to colleague Miss Analiisa, who loves this quote from Andre Malraux: “Often the difference between a successful person and a failure is not one has better abilities or ideas, but the courage that one has to bet on one’s ideas, to take a calculated risk – and to act.”

TIME MAPS (aka" When is Grandma Coming?")

Whenever there was something momentous coming up in our family life our boys would harass us with the questions of when it was coming… When will Christmas be here? When are Grandma and Bop coming to visit? When do we leave for Denver? When is my birthday?

It’s difficult to explain time to a young child. I can remember answering their questions with a specific amount of time- “Grandma is coming in three months” only to have them ask “when is three months?” Finally, I stumbled across a way to describe time to them in a way that they could comprehend. “Before Grandma comes we will have Easter, then the leaves will come out on the trees. The rhodies will bloom in the front yard, and the leaves on the trees will get really big. Nathaniel will have his birthday and then Grandma will be here”. (That translates to Grandma is coming in late June.)

I call this a time map. I would actually draw these events out on a piece of paper and cross them off as a way to track time for my boys. If I choose to list events that would actually occur on specific days on the calendar I could place stickers on the correct squares and cross those off when they occurred. It didn’t necessarily eliminate the questions about when something was going to happen, but it did at least give me a way to talk to them about a concept that was so beyond their understanding.

I found this worked well for the day-to-day “when” questions, too. “When will Daddy be home?” First we have to have lunch, and then we’ll play outside in the rain. We’ll have a story and a nap. When you wake up we’ll have a snack and play inside. Then Daddy will be home.”

I found that when I described time for my children in this way, they were less stressed and anxious about the future. Not only did they know when Grandma was coming, but they knew when a whole bunch of other things were going to happen too, and in what order those events would happen. They could understand time based on the order those events would happen. And not only that, they were learning to sequence.

When they took Kindergarten readiness tests one of the activities was a series of cards that told a story- like making a garden. Each card showed one step in the sequence. The child was required to put the cards in the proper order – turn the soil, plant the seeds, water the seeds, weed the patch and pick the blooms.

My boys totally aced this test. They understood sequencing. Their whole lives had been sequenced by events they could see and understand in order to alleviate the endless questions that made me nuts. Who knew my solution to the fact that children can’t tell time or read a calendar would give them a leg up in the task of understanding how things work in our world?

-posted by Miss Allison, a Kindermusik colleague who reminds you that after all… There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven. Ecclesiastes 3:1

Great Book--Conscious Discipline by Dr. Becky Bailey

"We all need help. We need new skills, not quick fixes. We need a way to resolve our internal conflicts and be the person we want children to become. We need to be compassionate without being permissive. We need to be firm without being disrespectful. We need changes that start from within us--changes that heal our souls, strengthen our character and improve our willpower--so we are strong enough to do the same for the children who walk through our doors and in our halls."

Dr. Becky Bailey

This book is also entitled 7 basic Skills for Brain Smart Classroom Management. However, I am finding many many helpful ideas for everyone who is in a relationship with anyone. Assertiveness, what you focus on you get more of, effective praise relies on describing, not judging and so much more.

Best activities for children under age 7?

We all want the best, varied experiences for our children. I have learned so much during the past six years as a Kindermusik educator regarding appropriate activities for children ages under 7 vs. children age 8 and above.

In the past 20 years, a trend of wanting more varied activities for our young children has developed. We took all those great activities that were for ages 8 and up, and started to make them accessible to younger children, such as sports and dance, etc. at 3 years old and even younger. Experts observed this phenomenon and said “YIKES, wait a minute; this isn’t what’s best for how most young brains learn.” “They learn best inside the home” with parents as their most important teachers.

Since they didn’t have the physical and emotional ability, along with the motor skills, to do these activities to their fullest when under age 7, many children were no longer involved when reaching age 11 because they were tired, bored and burned out. We created a generation of potential couch potatoes, with an attitude of ‘been-there-done-that’. Unfortunately the perspective of 11 year olds isn’t developed enough to realize they lacked the necessary skills when younger, but now that they are capable, they no longer desire to participate.

Some parents have stated they wish they could go back to the early years and not have their child involved with so many activities, and spend more quality time at home to solidify the parent-child relationship. This will maximize learning in all domains because the parent is the child’s most important teacher.

George Mason University did a study looking at a child’s emotional and social development and chose Kindermusik because we are the best. They studied to see how these skills developed with kids continually in Kindermusik, those who left for a while and came back, and kids with no Kindermusik experience. It overwhelmingly supports self-control in all learning domains with continuous enrollment in Kindermusik.
That’s why I get excited as a Kindermusik educator – because it’s about teaching children and parents everything they need to maximize learning in all domains – physical, cognitive, social, emotional and language. Kindermusik makes your great parenting even better by using the home activities and developmental information you receive to experience the power of Kindermusik right in your home. The class time allows you to bond with your child and other families and create a community of loving and caring people.

The key aspect of Kindermusik is one-on-one parent/child involvement, as opposed to other activities where the parent may be on the sidelines, an observer, or not even present.

There are always exceptions to the rule; each child is unique in their development and their parents would be wise to explore the best options to maximize their child’s potential.

Thoughts also contributed by Betsy Flanagan, Kindermusik Educator

Life in a Bubble

I recently read the excerpt below on the Kindermusik blog. It caught my attention, because we are living in a time where ideals are being re-thought and pillars, once thought unbreakable, are cracking and crumbling. Yet, each week, I meet with the most wonderful families. They check they're cares and stress at the door and for an hour they are free to just enjoy- enjoy time well spent, laughter, making music and joining in the silliness of children. Need a little bubble therapy? Come and experience a free preview Kindermusik class.

"We have learned the hard way in this recession that things are not always as they seem. Banks are not as solvent, General Motors is not as mighty, real estate is not as valuable. In fact, it seems as though we are in an epidemic of inauthenticity: character, genuineness, good faith, and sincerity are under siege. It’s no fun to read the paper anymore.

But from within the Kindermusik bubble, the world looks like it always has. The Kindermusik classroom bursts with authenticity: tender teachers, proven curricula, friendship, music, smiles. Perhaps what Kindermusik can teach all of us at times like these is that some things are truly timeless. Just as a playground swing still brings delight to a child as it did before iPhones, Twitter, and debit cards, Kindermusik wraps parent and child in bona fide warmth. Provides a true, joyful, and nurturing place where we can come together, share our children, and sing.

Nothing fancy, mighty, solvent, or newfangled.

But valuable? Authentic? Genuine? Sincere?

In a room full of children? Always."



contributed by Michael G. Dougherty (CEO, Kindermusik International)

Kindermusik brings auditory system to the forefront

These are transcribed excerpts from a discussion by Dr. Melissa Johnson, a pediatric psychologist and clinical associate of pediatrics.

Integration of listening skills, attention and language development is so important. One concern for kindergarten and pre-school teachers is that many children these days just don’t listen. Considering what young children are exposed to, there may be good reason for this. Music, or the arts in general, comes from electronic media which has a lot of visual stimulation, whether video, DVD’s or computer. There is a lot to look at and the auditory stimulation is generally more in the background. To be able to fully develop their musical skills and talents, as well as language skills, children need to focus on what’s coming into their ears, front and center. It needs to come in through their ears, rather than being an accompaniment to visual input or background. The Kindermusik curriculum focuses on auditory stimulation being the primary input. Visual support is used when appropriate and interesting without overwhelming or overshadowing the auditory stimulus. This may be a real asset to children in supporting the development of that area of their brains, along with their listening skills, that they might not get enough of through everyday activities at home.

The essence of language learning is stimulation; in order to initiate you have to hear, not only hear the big picture, but the fine points and details. When you think about it, so much meaning in English is conveyed by subtle differences from one word to another and if children are missing those subtle differences, they’re going to miss out on a lot of potential language development. So that’s partly why in a medical setting we are careful to check a child’s hearing if they have language delays but we find that many children hear just fine. However, for some reason they’re not adding the words and hearing the complexity of language or the clarity of articulation that we want to see. It may be that they’re not listening in to those fine distinctions. So giving children exposure to the fine distinctions in music, (solo or group singing, ethnic variety), instrument sounds and the world-life sounds that the Kindermusik curricula provides. This may really help children to tune into the kinds of subtle differences in the language world around them that could help them develop their speaking skills.

One absolutely key skill for children as they enter kindergarten is the ability to pay attention for extended periods. It’s the same with playful preschoolers which we tend not to worry about very much. But if you think about it, in the Kindergarten or preschool classroom, they really need to attend to what they’re hearing for fairly extended periods. And that’s something that a lot of children given a chance to practice or develop.

Consequently, the opportunity in the Kindermusik curricula for children to listen to input that, in itself, is very interesting and stimulating. This is likely to extend that skill, so when they’re in a classroom situation, they may be better listeners than children who haven’t had the opportunity to experience listening to the buoys and the ocean sounds and all those wonderful inputs that they might not get anywhere else.

Music: The great brain organizer

A human being is designed to enjoy things that promote the development of his brain, and therefore we naturally seek sensations that help organize our brains. This is one of the reasons children love music. Music helps to organize the brain.

It is said Albert Einstein was a mediocre student until he began playing the violin. ”Before that, he had a hard time expressing what he knew,” says Hazel Cheilek, orchestra director at a Virginia magnet high school where more than a third of the students also play or sing in musical ensembles. “Einstein said he got some of his greatest inspirations while playing violin. It liberated his brain so that he could imagine.”

Exposure to Music is Instrumental to the Brain

Building upon the pioneering work of Dr. Frances Rauscher,psychologist at the University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh,a recent study at the University of Munster in Germany revealed that …practicing the piano in early childhood expands the mind,
literally altering the anatomy of the brain.

In the study, conducted by Drs. Christo Pantev, Larry Roberts and Almut Engelien,
researchers examined images of the auditory brain regions of 20 trained musicians and 13 nonmusicians,all of whom were in their 20’s. The musicians had played instruments for 15 to 21 years and now practiced 10 to 40 hours a week. When piano notes were played to both groups,the response to the piano sounds was 25 percent higher in the musician group. But when the same frequencies were heard as beeps rather than as piano notes, the two groups’ brains looked
the same.

The study also concluded that the younger the musicians were when they began their musical training, the larger their areas of brain activity. The increased response to piano tones was the same in those who played piano, woodwinds or stringed instruments, although most of the musicians said they had received early piano training.According to Dr. Rauscher, musical training, specifically piano instruction appears to dramatically enhance a child’s abstract thinking skills and spatial-temporal ability – skills necessary for mathematics and science – even more than computer instruction does.

The combination of these scientific findings, plus ongoing research into the field, continues to point to one conclusion: music has an obvious impact on the brain and should be supported and encouraged in early childhood education.

Source:
http://www.amc-music.org/musicmaking/brain/munster.htm

Singing and Young Children

Young children certainly aren’t ready for true voice lessons. But that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t sing and you can . And there are ways that parents can help them sing correctly AND do some fun activities that will help them develop good habits and work the muscles to sing well.

• Explore the many types of noises that the mouth and voice can make
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• Encourage them to sing in their upper range (higher notes)
• Play with glissando’s - sounds that start on one pitch and slide around to other pitches. Making high sounds, and sliding to low sounds actually helps children sing in their high head voice
• Hum your favorite tunes. Hum a melody, and have someone guess the song. Humming has two specific benefits according to Jean Westerman Gregg, speech-language pathologist with a specialty in voice therapy. Humming over a period of time increases the strength of the fundamental in the acoustic spectrum, thereby affecting the quality of the singing voice. Also, over an extended period of time, the vibration sensation of humming seems to increase the carrying power of the voice resulting in more volume with less effort.
• Blow with long sustained breaths. Blowing helps to increase breath control. Breath control affects the ability to speak, sing or read a complete sentence or thought. It is dependent upon the strength of the diaphragm and lungs. Blowing can benefit both the speaking and singing voice by increasing that strength. In our Creatures at the Ocean class last week, we long blowing breaths to make the scarf rise with Blow the Wind Southerly.
• Blow into a scarf, or simply blow around a few tissues, or cotton balls.
• Have a contest where two people stand across from each other at a table, with a tissue in the middle, then see who can blow it across the table first when you are both trying to blow it.
• Blow through straws and try to move a ping pong ball in the same type of game.

Here is an overview of the development of a child’s vocal development. After babbling, in which infants often play with "... glissandi and groups of musical pitches and phrases in a repetitive fashion ... words and fragments of song text ... become the focus of attention, followed by certain rhythmic features and,subsequently, the pitch components." The basic learning hierarchy appears to be: "Words-> Rhythm -> Pitch" This develops further: "Pitch Contour -> Individual Phrase Stability-> Overall Key Stability". "By the age of five to six years, young children's singing may have acquired many of the features of the significant adult models."

In Kindermusik, every activity is developmentally appropriate encouraging development in all domains of learning. We sing and explore our voices in lots of different and interesting ways. So many parents have told me that their children really began to communicate after being in Kindermusik. Singing and speaking are very closely related but singing gives your child another way to express themselves and their emotions. Hope to see you soon in class!!!

Playing With Tempo

We’ve been playing with tempo recently in Imagine That. Preschool age children love learning tempo, because no matter how long we spend on slow, they know we will eventually get to fast – and that means running!

Tempo allows us to introduce some of the beautiful Italian terminology that all musicians use. Largo means slow. Adagio means moderately slow, but largo is the very slowest tempo marking there is. (I do admit, though, that the word adagio is a more beautiful word than largo…)

When a child moves their body slowly, they are mastering gross motor muscle control. I love to watch them move in slow motion because they don’t really know how to move slowly. Some of them do a stop motion technique – they move and freeze, then move and freeze over and over again. Some of them inch along; their bodies full of tension and seemingly ready to explode with full-blown motion at any instant.

Some of them just stop and watch me (We do lots of slow motion activities in acting classes, so I am really good at it!) I know they are watching me so that they can figure out how to do it – and soon they begin to try to stretch out their movements, and extend their limbs to the farthest point away from their bodies. Their facial expressions slow down and delight fills their eyes as they begin to realize that they are suddenly in control of this marvelous thing they call their body.

Because, let’s face it, when you’re a preschooler, you very often feel as if your body is in charge of you. The need to move is so overwhelming that even when your internal child knows you need to sit, like for circle time, your body is demanding that you move, and mostly you feel powerless to stop it.

Learning to move slowly assists in giving your preschooler the much needed confidence they need to know that they are, indeed, in charge of their body.

A Simple Way to Practice at Home

Put on some slow classical music and have a slow motion dance. You may need to invent a story (boys are more likely to require a reason to move slowly) to explain WHY you want them to move in slow motion. Maybe their super hero persona has been zapped by a slow motion ray by their arch nemesis, or their fire fighter persona is trying to walk through a vat of maple syrup to save a kitten in a burning tree… any little scenario will do. A prop will make this game more fun and loosens up their inhibitions- and yours too! Scarves and streamers are really good options. For you super hero – a cape is always best.

Don’t have slow classical music? Go to iTunes and search for LARGO. Most classical composers named their music in descriptive terms, so the tempo setting is often listed in the title. I also searched for LENTO (just a little faster than Largo) and ADAGIO. One word of caution: I would steer away from anything with lyrics because the story in the song may inhibit your child’s motions, and creativity. Instrumental music allows them to create their own story.