All About "CUDDLE & BOUNCE"

 

Baby Music Classes

Calling All Newborns, Infants, and Babies!

Kindermusik offers a unique learning experience for parents and their young babies. 

Whether your baby is six weeks, six months, or a whole year old, he or she will love 

spending together time with a parent, grandparent, or caregiver in a Kindermusik 

baby class.

Music is one of your baby’s favorite things – and it’s one of the best things for 

your baby’s developing mind. Babies’ brains are filled with literally billions of 

neurons—all just waiting to be connected through sensory stimulation. And 

that’s exactly what a Kindermusik class offers: a sensory rich environment, 

complete with music, movement, and calm, baby-style fun that is sure to 

create and strengthen baby’s neural pathways. Each Kindermusik class 

touches on a multitude of learning domains, creates special bonding moments, 

and lays the groundwork for a lifelong love of music.

What you’ll experience in Kindermusik Baby Music Classes

- Nurturing Baby’s Growth and Development

-  Language and Vocal Development 

-  Brain Development 

- Large Muscle Skills

- Small Muscle Skills

- Social-Emotional Development

- Musical Development

How Music Classes Prepare Your Child For School

Early childhood education is important, and Kindermusik International believes that you – the parent – are your child’s first and best teacher.  But what to do with your child until he is 7 years old?  We’d like to recommend Kindermusik classes!

9 ways Music Classes prepare your child for school

Music classes in the early years that include parental involvement and focus on learning in a fun, developmentally appropriate way inspire a lifelong love for learning.

Practice with steady beat, enjoying movement activities, and playing instruments help developcoordination and motor skills necessary for cutting with scissors, holding a pencil, or kicking a ball, for example.

Music classes that are teaching children rhymes and then later, the basics of beginning to read music pave the way to literacy.

Music classes give your child a place to practice those all-important social skills, like cooperatively play, sharing, and following directions.

The best music classes will encourage your child to think creatively, developing critical thinking skills and the ability to problem-solve.

In an environment where process, not performance, is stressed, music classes build self-confidence and a willingness to try new things.

Music classes that gradually increase a child’s independence at the class help the child more successfully transition to the school classroom.

In these classes, children have the opportunity to bond and interact with their teacher, learning to listen and respond to someone other than the special adults who surround them at home.

Science and research have proven time and time again that music positively impacts a child in all areas of development – social/emotional, language, cognitive, physical, and language/literacy.

from here

The Power of Your Touch

Music and movement are magical ingredients to learning for both the child and parent. A baby’s first communication is through movement. A toddler immediately responds to lively music with silly gyrations and flailing limbs – and while these movements usually make us giggle, to him they are serious attempts to coordinate movement with rhythmic patterns. The preschooler seems to be constantly moving – leaping off couches, rolling down hills, and spinning around and around 

Movement is fundamental for the development of the central nervous system, and science proves it. But what’s more, movement and rhythm are also essential for the development of the soul. These are things that can’t be measured with research and studies.

When a parent moves with her infant, a special bonding takes place that is key to social and emotional growth. When a parent sings to her child, not only are language skills being developed, but also a sense of love, comfort and harmony. The special touching, laughing, and rhythmic moving that takes place in a music and movement class lays a very strong and much needed foundation for a happy, healthy and joyful life!

Here are just a few of the ways that Kindermusik children learn through the interactive music and movement activities of the Kindermusik classroom:

• Intentional touch is designed to provide stimulation of the nervous system, relaxation and bonding.
• Activities involve unilateral, bi-lateral and cross-lateral movements that help develop the brain and muscles.
• Movement and dance steps allow the caregiver and child to experience different rhythms and locomotor movements.
• Synchronized dances develop sequencing, provide reassuring repetition and social interaction.
• Expressive movement provides variety, creativity, and opposing feelings such as fast and slow, high and low.
• Rocking and swinging stimulate the vestibular system, which is so important to balance and even eye movement.
• Props, such as the “humongous” scarves and parachutes, provide tactile and visual stimulation.

So put on your Kindermusik CD at home and don’t worry about performing the dances “just right.” Don’t even worry about right and left! Simply move to the music and have fun! It all makes a difference.

Source

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

Routines and Rituals

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While routines provide continuity, comfort and security for children,rituals provide children with the opportunity to build connections with others.  In a sense, rituals are routines with “extra sparkle.” Families often have rituals associated with holidays and birthdays.  According to Becky Bailey, author of I Love You Rituals, “loving, healthy rituals foster the development of loving, emotionally healthy children.”  From infancy on, children count on rituals and routines for comfort and security.  Routines comfort children and serve as cues for what is expected of them, giving children a sense of control over their environment.  When a child knows what will happen next and what is expected of him, he will be better able to participate and to act independently, which is an important developmental step (Poole 1998). 

IDEA: Plan for simple, fun ways to add the sparkle to your everyday routines that will turn them into special rituals.  A “wake up” poem in the morning, a posted schedule for the day, a special placemat at lunch, letting everyone tell about one favorite part of their day around the supper table, a family dance, and a lullaby sung before bedtime at night – any of these are the kinds of little things that can add joy and predictability to your child’s day.

-from minds on music

Music in your routine

Photo It can be very simple to surround your child with music – the greater the variety, the better! Singing simple songs together can get the morning off to a great start. Child-safe instruments and some recorded music can provide happy times of self-entertainment or together time. Quiet, soothing music before naps and bedtime establishes a wonderfully reassuring sleep time routine. A dance around the kitchen can soothe the supper-time “fussies.” A cuddle and a lullaby at the end of the day adds the sweetest and happiest of memorable moments. -Theresa Case

Listen like I do!

Guidelines For Modeling Good Listening Skills • Be interested and attentive. Children can tell whether they have a parent's interest and attention by the way the parent replies or does not reply. Forget about the telephone and other distractions. Maintain eye contact to show that you really are with the child. • Encourage talking. Some children need an invitation to start talking. Children are more likely to share their ideas and feelings when others think them important. • Listen patiently. People think faster than they speak. Children often take longer than adults to find the right word. Listen as though you have plenty of time. • Hear children out. Avoid cutting children off before they have finished speaking. It is easy to form an opinion or reject children's views before they finish what they have to say. It may be difficult to listen respectfully and not correct misconceptions, but respect their right to have and express their opinions. -Carl Smith

Listen and follow along

Photo "'Read' a song together. Buy a music tape and a corresponding book of lyrics, so you can follow the words along with the music. Even beginning readers can pretend to read a songbook." -Holly Hanke This can become addictive, so be prepared for your child to request the same song on a tape or CD over and over again!

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!!!

Words and more words...

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"Exposure to a variety of movement words helps children link movement and language at a time when word acquisition is occurring at a fast pace. Between the ages of 18 months and 4 years children are comprehending an average of one new word for every hour they’re awake. By age 4 most kids know around 10,000 words." -Cheow Yu Yuan

Nothing can replace your role as a parent in talking to your baby or child. TV does not even come close to teaching words and language the way your conversations do. Don't let life get too busy that you don't make some time regularly to sit eye-to-eye and talk with your little one - but mostly LISTEN (and help expose them to a few new words at a time)! Dancing together also accomplishes great strides in vocabulary acquisition if you describe the movements you are making together - it is priceless!

What just happened?

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When our children experience sudden undesirable events (minor accidents, seeing a scary image, breaking something, or stains), they can often overreact because they don't understand fully what just happened or how the damage can sometimes be undone. According to "What to Expect: The Toddler Years" by Heidi Murkoff, "Let your toddler know that everyone has fears... but try your best to control yours. If your toddler sees you take charge of your fears calmly, he or she may eventually learn to do likewise, based on your model. If, on the other hand, you jump three feet in the air every time you spy a spider, you'll be showing your toddler how to let fear take charge" (p. 211). You can even embrace a little craziness - for example, if your child spills a little water just on the table, you can trace letters/shapes in it together with your fingers, then clean it up together - no anger, reprimand, or shock needed! It takes practice to develop an attitude of curiosity, courage, and patience in these sudden moments.

STRONG!

Ten Tips for Positive Parenting Your Strong-Willed, Spirited Child


1. Avoid power struggles by using routines and rules.

2. Your strong-willed child wants mastery more than anything.

3. Give your strong-willed child choices.

4. Give her authority over her own body.

5. Don't push him into opposing you.

6. Side step power struggles by letting your child save face.

7. Listen to her.

8. See it from his point of view.

9. Discipline through the relationship, never through punishment.

10. Offer him respect and empathy.

-Dr. Laura Markham

Happiness is HUGGING!

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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!