Our First Concerto!

When creating music together with others in an ensemble setting, children and adults alike have a better opportunity to experience music with “greater harmonic color, musical depth, variety of sound, and rhythmic complexities” than if they only played alone. Ensemble opportunities like the ones found in Kindermusik class also “stimulate and challenge” self-confidence, imagination, creativity, self-expression, and musical understanding. (Leung 2006)

Here is a video we made of our in class Concerto:

The Importance of Steady Beat

Steady beat is the most fundamental concept in music. It’s the ongoing, steady, repetitive pulse that occurs in songs, chants, rhymes, and music. It’s the part that makes you want to tap your toes, clap your hands, or jump up and dance like no one is watching.

Even newborn babies respond to the steady beat of music, and that’s no surprise when you consider they have been listening to the steady beat of their mother’s heart from inside the womb. Most children learn to keep a steady beat while swaying, clapping, moving their arms, and beating a loud, booming drum. This skill will help a child prepare to later use scissors, a hammer, a saw, a whisk, and all kinds of other tools. Not to mention, it’s absolutely essential to learning a musical instrument.

Through musical exploration in the Kindermusik classroom, your child may develop steady beat competency in the legs and feet as well. This lower body competency is necessary for playing sports, like dribbling and shooting a basketball, as well as for dancing, skipping, running and even walking easily.

Total body beat competency even emerges in the ability to speak and read with a smooth cadence, thereby enhancing communication abilities. Studies also show that ability to keep a steady beat is connected with fluency in reading. A study by Phyllis Weikert showed that being “able to keep a steady beat helps a person to feel the cadence (rhythm) of language” and can also affect their sense of equilibrium (www.earlychildhoodnews.com).

Steady beat is an fundamental as it gets, and equally as important!

 from Minds on Music

STEADY BEAT

Photo "A STEADY BEAT is an unchanging continuous pulse. This is different from the Rhythm Patterns of a specific song. The ability to keep a steady beat is developed over time, and can be started with very young children. Such skills are not that difficult to learn for persons of any age, but developing a sufficient level of competence requires support from knowledgeable adults as guides, and plenty of opportunities for practice. A well developed steady beat is required for walking, talking, using a pair of scissors and bouncing a ball, as well as many other abilities. Feeling and moving to steady beat develops a sense of time and the ability to organize and coordinate movements within time." -Debbie Mondale

Hearing Patterns

Photo "When children drum along to the rhythms in a song or to their own name, they practice careful listening and pattern recognition. This is one way children hear sounds in words – a skill necessary for word recognition, speaking, reading, and writing. Each time a child is exposed to a new object or experience, new neural connections are made in his brain. Turn a plastic bowl or empty oatmeal container into a simple homemade drum. Let babies learn the cause and effect by just banging on the drum. Allow your toddler to drum away – to a favorite recording or just to the song in his heart. You can also play an easy “Echo Me” game where you chant a short, simple rhythm and they tap it back to you on their drum. You can up the challenge for your preschooler or big kid by asking them to tap back the rhythms in a favorite song or the rhythms of some fun words. -Theresa Case

Unusual recipe for learning success!!!

Photo Carla Hannaford (award winning author and eductor) writes, “Movement is essential to learning. Movement integrates and anchors new information into our neural networks. Every time we move in an organized manner, full brain activation and integration occurs, and the door to learning opens.” "Combine movement, which fully activates the brain, and creates and strengthens neural networks, with music, which is the only activity that simultaneously stimulates every area of the brain, and you have a recipe for successful learning. As a home schooling mom, here’s some things that we’ve done that combine music (or the components of music like rhythm and meter) that assist in learning. (You don’t have to home school to do these things. You are your child’s first and most important teacher!) 1. While singing learning songs or poems and chants, we have a small indoor trampoline for jumping on... Jumping really seems to make the just inputted information stick in brains better. 2. My children all sit on exercise balls. I’ve noticed that when new or more difficult concepts are being learned, their ability to sit still decreases. All that electrical energy in their brain is going towards creating new or stronger neural pathways. An exercise ball allows them to have the movement they need, without being distracting, so that brain energy is spent focusing on learning, rather than using that brain power to sit quietly.... 3. When learning to spell difficult words or ... counting by 2’s, 5’s, etc., we get up and bounce a ball back and forth, taking turns counting or giving the next letter in a word. The kids love it, and they learn faster and better. 4. Playing background music is great, too. One suggestion – during homework or school time, the best music to listen to has no words. 5. Be sure to give your children plenty of get up and play breaks to rest and refocus eyes, and allow the brain to process everything they just learned. Otherwise, the information really will be in one ear and out the other." Source What a revolutionary learning technique for academic information!!!

Mozart is amazing!

Photo

A study from 1998 at the Univ. of Wisconsin in Oshkosh shows that, "Music exposure initiated at an early age enhances spatial performance in rats similar to results found in humans." This study compared the effects of minimalist music, noise, and a Mozart Sonata to test rats' performance in a maze. Of course, the rats who consistently listened to Mozart performed faster and completed the maze more easily. Our children need exposure to high-quality music starting at an early age with order and predictable rhythm. Crazy noise and irregular beats, too much monotony, and, of course, the often questionable lyrics of many popular rock songs are not conducive to intelligent thinking and learning. You are making a great choice by involving your child in great musical experiences that will create a much better environment for their long-term development!

Source

Tempo is truly terrific!

Photo

"Because our little ones are instinctively interested in fast and slow (mostly fast!), Kindermusik capitalizes on that interest.... Your child will do many activities in the years to come that involve tempo. Did you know there is a tempo to running, swinging a golf club, a tennis racket, a baseball bat? There is a tempo in moving up and down the basketball court, the soccer field, the football field.... Experiences with tempo translate later into valuable skills that cross into every area of your child’s life – music, sports, dance, gymnastics, art, drama, and more!" -Theresa Case

Try walking fast, then slow with your baby or child through your house or a store and ask them to try talking slowly or really fast. See how engaged they become in this game!

Happiness is HUGGING!

Photo source

According to "What to Expect: The Toddler Years" (Murkoff p. 290), "The single most important ingredient [for happiness], child development experts agree, is loving, physical contact. One long-term study, in fact, which followed its subjects from early childhood into their thirties, showed that being raised with an abundance of hugs, kisses, and cuddling went further toward producing happy adults than being raised with any other advantage, and even seemed to help negate such potential risk factors as poverty, broken homes, and stress. The study also suggests that kids who are hugged a lot are not only more likely to turn out to be happy adults, but to find more satisfaction in all areas of life, including marriage and family, friendships, and career.... Have I hugged my child today?" A fun game to help you hug and touch and teach at the same time is tapping a rhythm on your child's back as you hug them, and ask them to tap it on your back. You can let them lead and invent new rhythms as they are able. And you can do this in a group or as a family to see if everyone taps the same rhythm. You can also vocalize as you tap to make it easier to remember. Have fun and stay CLOSE!

Capoeira

http://youtu.be/WV-Sf5-aCcc
Have you ever heard of capoeira? It is a fun, musical, rhythmic, culturally enriching, exciting, usually painless form of martial arts from Brazil. Try some moves with your child and check out the video. It can help in many aspects of children's development (socially, emotionally, musically, and physically). Remember - no hurting each other!

Go with the beat

Photo source

Little hands can draw dots, circles, lines, and scribbles to the beat of a song (with a little help from you!). Try turning on some slow music, then faster music to see if your child can draw/color to a steady beat. If you model this with enthusiasm, they'll be curious to find out if it's really all that fun - and it IS!

MARCH, 2, 3, 4 AND MARCH . . .

In all Kindermusik classes, there is always emphasis on hearing, feeling, moving, and even “seeing” a steady beat. It may seem very elementary, but it is essentially the cornerstone of music.

More importantly, steady beat plays a huge importance in our speech, movement, thoughts and verbal organization. From a baby’s first hesitant steps, he slowly finds his pace and soon starts to walk steadily and confidently. Our preschoolers who have a strong sense of beat would be able to use the scissors more skillfully. Ever watch a basketball game? The steady dribble of the ball before it is tossed into the basket require an acute sense of beat and timing. A master chef needs to have a command of steady beat in his knife skills. Even writers rely on a sense of steady beat and rhythm in their prose to produce a good read.

Because it is such a fundamental element, parents and teachers often do not give sufficient attention to the development of this very important underlying skill – a strong sense of beat. The consequence of insufficient steady beat experiences in early years can result in poor physical coordination, halting speech (in some cases, stuttering), and even weakness in thought flow. Would you have imagined that something so apparently a strictly musical characteristic can have such bearing on so many areas of our functioning?!

You could invite your whole family to march around your living room or throughout the house. The leader may want to proudly carry a “baton” (even a wooden spoon is great!). If you march to Radetsky's march, notice the volume changes, and encourage your leader to adjust his movements to reflect the different sound levels (Wiggles and Giggles home activity book - online). Have fun taking turns with leaders or providing different instruments for the "band" to play as you march!

MOVEMENT AND LEARNING

Microsoft Word Clipart

Balance, coordination, spatial awareness, directionality, and visual literacy are developed [when movement is used in learning]. These components are developed as children roll, creep, crawl, spin, twirl, bounce, balance, walk, jump, juggle, and support their weight in space. Self-awareness, self-esteem and social skills are also enhanced through movement (Lengel & Kuczala 2010).

Crawling is a cross-lateral movement that activates both hemispheres of the brain in a balanced way... [which] heightens cognitive functions and increases learning. Activities such as reading, writing, thinking clearly, and problem solving are skills that involve both hemispheres of the brain. Cross lateral movements help the hemispheres to work together (Hannaford, Smart Moves).

Try showing or helping your child to cross arms and then tickle their toes while sitting, standing and bending, or kicking forwards or backwards. And doing this to a musical beat is even more fun!