Oldies but Goodies

Mother Goose nursery rhymes are loaded with rhythm. Try reciting "Polly put the kettle on" as you start breakfast: "Rub-a-dub-dub" at bath time; "Trot, trot to Boston" as you bounce baby on your knee, the list is endless! Before you know it, your child will be chanting "One, two, buckle my shoe" while he gets dressed and "To market, to market, to buy a fat pig" when you run out for groceries.

Name that Tune

Clap out the rhythm of one of your child's favorite songs and see if s/he can guess what it is. (Hum if s/he needs a little hint.) For even more fun, let the kids do the clapping and YOU do the guessing!

Milagros Sign and Sing Event

Come to a Sign and Sing Demo
Milagros Children's Boutique
in NE Portland at 11:00 am

Dance, Dance, Dance

Put on your favorite tunes, hold your baby in your arms, grab her rattle, and shimmy round the room. If your "baby" is old enough to do her own dancing, hold hands and boogie together. Remember, the last dance is always a slow one: go cheek-to-cheek, and you might even get her to nap.

Visual Rhythm

Rhythm patterns are sequences. Help your preschooler discover vusual sequences using pattern blocks purchased at a toy store or educational supply house. Keep the blocks in a basket on the kitchen counter and let your child make fun designs while you get dinner. For the toddler who'd rather bang blocks together, see if you can coax him into a rhythmic beat: tap, tap, tappy-tap!

Bring the Rhythm Home!

Form a Rhythm Band
If it's your turn for play group, if you're having a birthday party, or if you just find yourself with a houseful of kids on a rainy day, form a rhythm band. Keep the beat to the songs on your favorite CD (The beat and rhythm section from Make Way for Music CD is a particularly good one for this) or make your own music.

• Rhythm Sticks: Nothing works better than two wooden spoons.
• Tom Toms: Decorate an empty oatmeal box or nut can, etc and drum away.
• Tambourine: Staple two paper plates together with beans inside, hang ribbons as streamers for pizzazz.
• Sandblocks: Glue a square of sandpaper to the side of an empty juice box or small block of wood. Rub two together to make a rhythmic swishing sound.

Blue Danube Waltz

Today waltzes may conjure up images of elegance: ball gowns, tiaras, and lovely gliding step, but two hundred years ago the waltz was considered shockingly risque'. Here was advance where you touched your partner's body and were swept into a dizzying whirl around the ballroom floor. Simply scandalous! When the waltz was danced at a ball in London, the Times reported:

"We remarked with pain that the indecent foreign dance called the Waltz was introduced...at the English         court on Friday last...it is quite sufficient to cast one's eyes on the voluptuous intertwining of the limbs and close compressor on the bodies in their dance, to see that it is indeed far removed from the modest       reserve which as hitherto been considered distinctive of English Females."

Despite such scandal, during the nineteenth century this Austrian peasant dance conquered the ballrooms of Europe. Vienna was the home of the waltz, and two Austrian composers, Johann Strauss I and II, were the nineteenth-century equivalent of Cole Porter, Elvis, and the Beatles rolled into one. This father and son duo was at the top of the charts for nearly 75 years.

Strauss the younger wrote On the Beautiful Blue Danube in 1867, just weeks after the Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph suffered a terrible defeat by Prussia at the battle of Sadowa. It was a dark time for Austria, but Strauss's new waltz glittered. First performed as a choral work by the Vienna Men's Choral Association, the orchestral version quickly became Strauss's biggest hit, cementing the composer's reputation as Vienna's Waltz king.

Burgerville Fundraiser this Thursday!!

Burgerville on 25th and Powell
from 5:00 to 8:00 PM
They will be donating 10% of all sales to Atkinson!

Listening equals learning

Listening Equals Learning

"It turns out that mere exposure makes an enormous contribution to how musical competence develops." -researchers at the University of Amsterdam

In Kindermusik class, we tell parents that simply having their child in an interactive musical environment has huge impact. This impact usually goes well beyond what we are seeing in class. (For example, a child may initially be shy about singing in class. At home, however, she will sing the class songs all the time! We know she's learning and abosorbing).

Recent research backs up what we have known and seen for years. According to researchers at the University of Amsterdam (2008), there is evidence that some musical capabilities are developed just by being exposed to music, especially music of the listener’s preferred genre. And we can tell you that Kindermusik kids LOVE their Kindermusik music. (And most parents are closet fans too!)

When it comes to music, listening equals learning. Most parents instinctively recognize the power of music and want to do all they can to foster their child’s musical interests and development. One of the easiest things you can do is surround your child with an active musical environment. Kindermusik International’s experience over the past 30 years has shown that for young children –- baby, toddler, preschooler, or big kid -- there’s no better way to listen and learn than with us!

Check out Kindermusik Play, our new e-music site to preview and download some of our music. Have a listen with your kids. They'll be learning!

To check out the research, click here. From ScienceDaily (Aug. 13, 2008): Researchers at the University of Amsterdam (UvA) have demonstrated how much the brain can learn simply through active exposure to many different kinds of music. "More and more labs are showing that people have the sensitivity for skills that we thought were only expert skills," Henkjan Honing (UvA) explains.

Special thanks to Kindermusik educator Theresa Case for her contributions to this article. Theresa's Kindermusik program, Kindermusik at Piano Central Studios, is in the top 1% of all programs in the world.
Posted by Kindermusik International


Filed under benefits, childhood, children, connections, kids, kindermusik, music, music experiences, skills, Posted February 19, 2010

"Rhythm is the life of space of time danced through."
Cecil Taylor

Kindermusik Spring Celebration

Come Celebrate The Arrival of Spring With Kindermusik!

We’ll be Welcoming the Spring with Music!

Singing, Dancing, Instruments and
Face Painting with Miss Yvette








Saturday, March 13th
10:30 - 11:30 am
The New Day Center for the Arts
5516 SE Foster Rd, Portland

RSVP: 503-708-2827 / jansonfamily@spiritone.com


If you are unable to attend call to set up a Free preview class!

Family Time Class

Family Time Class was so much fun yesterday! My favorite part was watching all the families waltz!

Beat, beat, beat

"Like the beat, beat, beat of the tom tom
When the jungle shadows fall,
Like the tick, tick, tock of the stately clock
As it stands against the wall.
Like the drip, drip, drip of the rain drops
When the summer showers through,
A voice within me keeps repeating
You, you, you."
Cole Porter

Your Preschooler and Beat and Rhythm

If toddlers can begin to keep a steady beat, then preschoolers can do it that much better. But it takes amazing skills to move to the music, so you'll notice lots of variation in ability from one child to the next. Think about it--to move to music a child needs to bring together all kinds of things!  First, s/he has to have control over her/his muscles.  S/he needs the physical aiblity to tap that toe or clap those hands with precision.  Then s/he needs the math skills to recognize the pattern of the rhythm.  S/he also has to use his/her memory to keep the paterrn repeating over and over.  Don't forget attention span--s/he needs to pay attention to figure out what's going on in the midst of a lot of sensory input.  Most importantly, your child needs those little brain connections that organize the entire shebang: the muscles, the memory, and the math.  They all must work together in a kiddy version of a waltz, tango, or bunny hop.

Connor and Mommy Moving with Scarves

Your Toddler and Beat and Rhythm

If anyone seems to march to the beat of a different drummer, it's a toddler. But watch your toddler during any music time and you'll see how remarkably capable s/he is of moving in time to the music. It may look awkward, but not only can s/he keep a simple beat, he enjoys it. the toddler years are all about taking chage of one's own body, and moving to the beat is yet another way of saying, "I am the master of my arms and legs!" You may even find your child inventing his own little nonsense songs, complete with his own unique rhythms.

Learning to dance in rhythm has some fascinating implications for developing cognitive skills. Rhythms are patterns: some very simple, such as the on-two, one-two of a march, and some much more comples (salsa, anyone?). Although we parents may think that learning how to count is the first math skill we teach our children, learning about patterns is a math skill that begins much earlier. So keep on dancing...One-two, cha-cha-cha.

Question for the day

What do you spend the more time on -- your computer or your iPhone/Blackberry/Droid/etc.? Or are you addicted to one or allergic to both? :)

Your Infant and Beat and Rhythm

The daily rhythms of life change when a newborn joins a family. Suddenly, everyone must adjust to the new sleep and wake cycles, and to the baby's pattern of comfort and discomfort. And with most babies, these rhythms change often and unpredictably! No sooner do you think you've established a pattern of sleeping, feeding, playing and diapering, than your child changes the tempo, and you must learn to keep time all over again.

You and your infant are discovering beats and rhythms with each interaction. You listen closely to the tempo of your newborn's breathing. You sense her pattern of sucks and pauses as she feeds. The two of you develop brief but powerful back-and-forth moments when you make eye contact. Without any self-consciousness you begin using baby-talk, because your baby responds so naturally to a rhythmic voice. From the moment she's born, your child engages you in an intricate dance where you are intuitively aware of every subtle change in the music.

Our Time Class

Ava and Grampa Mitch having fun with Hula Hoops in Our Time class on Monday!

Beat and Rhythm

Babies get their first introduction to rhythm before they're even born, when they sense the comfort of their mother's heartbeat in the womb. Rhythm adds richness and meaning throughout our lives. We have rhythms of time--seasons of the year, night and day, work and play.  We also have rhythms of sound, not only in the organized beats of music, but also in a dog's bark, the steady beat of the washing machine's rumble, and in everyday spoken language.  Rhythm is like ritual.  It provides predictability and comfort, letting us know that things are as they should be.

During Family Time Class we become more aware of beats and rhythms, and, even better, have fun creating them together.  We use our voices, bodies and instruments to keep the beat.  Join in the march, waltz, or jig and discover that not only rhythm fun, it creates attitude.

Listen to all kinds of music

"...at a signal they began their music all together: the donkey brayed, the dog barked, the cat mewed, and the cock crowed; then with one great smash, they dashed through the window into the room..." The Bremen Town Musicians

Inhibitory Control

One aspect of self-control is inhibitory control, or the ability to stop oneself and to wait. Toddlers love stop and go games because they allow the child to practice control over his/her physical body and to revel in his/her master of this control. Inhibitor control is important in social interactions where taking turns is involved, and as such is an important skill for success in school.

Reading to Baby

Reading to Baby in a pleasant environment helps her learn that reading is pleasurable. It also helps her begin to decode language. Infants younger than six months can distingish a wide range of speech contrasts. By eight months many can distinguish familiar words from unfamiliar words.

Come Celebrate The Coming of Spring With Kindermusik!

We’ll be Welcoming the Spring with Music

Singing, Dancing, and Instruments

Saturday, March 13th

10:30 - 11:30 am

at

The New Day Center for the Arts

5516 SE Foster Rd, Portland

RSVP: 503-708-2827 / jansonfamily@spiritone.com

Yes, please bring a friend!

Fine Motor Movements

During the first part of life, gross motor activities dominate the child's repertoire of movment with the major objective being the mastery of walking. Now the child can focus on activities that encourage the development of fine muscles. Fine motor movements allow the child to increase skills that require finger and hand movements such as putting together a simple puzzle, painting with a paintbrush, turning a page of a book or stringing beads.

The Unexpected

When things break it can be upsetting to children, and they often need help getting through the upset. Playing out a resolution to this type of event helps children rehearse an attitude of "I can do something about this." Being able to respond to unexpected or undesitred events in this way is an important life skill.

Legato and Staccato

Legato and staccato are opposite styles of articulation that can be experienced through a variety of modes, heightening children's awareness of this element of music. While legato is smooth and connected staccato is detached. Important ways to experience these concepts include using legato and staccato movements, hearing legato and staccato articulation, and singing and playing vocally with legato and staccato articulation.

Events :: Milagros Boutique

Events :: Milagros Boutique: "on Milagros at http://milagrosboutique.com
Sign and Sing - Free Demo Class
When: Monday, March 1st 2010 11:30am – 12:00pm
Where: Milagros, 5429 NE 30th Avenue, Portland, OR 97211
Early Communication — From the moment a parent meets that little one, there is a strong desire to understand. What is he thinking? Is he hungry, tired, too cold, content? Early on, every baby also has an innate desire to communicate.
In a Kindermusik Sign & Sing class (developed by Signing Smart™), we give parents the tools and knowledge to communicate with their babies using American Sign Language. Through songs and play, both parents and babies learn signs for words like “mommy” and “eat,” and as well as practical signs like “more,” “milk,” and when he’s “all done.” This research-proven signing class for hearing children speeds language development, eases frustration, and enhances long-term learning abilities.
Free!"

Listening

"I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen." Ernest Hemingway

Emotional Security:

Running and jumping into the arms of an adult is a favorite game of young children. It allows children to practice and master the skills of running and jumping and/or leaping. It also has meaningful emotional content. Knowing that Daddy or Grandma will catch her when she jumps is a display of trust and represents a level of emotional security in the relationship.

Falling Down and Getting Back Up

As young toddlers have the physical experience of falling down and then getting back up, a significant emotional event occurs as well. They are encountering and overcoming a fear of imbalance, and are developing confidence in their physical skills.

"Bodily movements often carry strong psychological meanings. With young children in particular, motion conveys emotion more powerfully than words. In the second year of life, motion is centered on the achievement of balance, and the risk of losing this balance becomes a central concern. Physical balance stands as a symbol for emotional balance, in child play as well as in adult imagery." The Emotional Life of the Toddler, by Alicia F. Lieberman

Capture their world of energy

Ahhh! Life with a preschooler. New skills, new questions, new activities, new friends. It can be downright exhausting! But you learn to embrace the emotional rollercoaster. Equilibruim: "I love you." "I love my hamster." "I love everything." Disequilibrium: "My shoelaces aren't right." "I hate salad." "I won't go to bed." (Do they still make shoes with shoelaces?)

You expect their world to be of opposites: conforming/rebelling; in-bounds/out-of-bounds; security/insecurity. But never underestimate the joy and the learning potential of their turn-on-a dime toggles from reality to fantasy. When you play with 3- and 4-year-olds, you really learn how to play. You don't pretend to be a princess or pirate...you are a princess or pirate. The world magically transforms into a palace or a ship despite the uniformed eye seeing sofas and chairs.

As a grandma, I will not let the challenging aspects of a preschooler's growth and learning sap my energy. I plan to capture their world of energy and eagerness and lean into that imagination.

Silly and Creative
Take those beloved nursery rhymes and make them silly - adding new rhyming words to foster their listening acuity, sense of rhythm and phrases, and creativity. Future reader. Future musician.

Sing a Story, Sing a Transition, Sing a Chore
Use familiar melodies (e.g. Row, Row, Row Your Boat) or make one up, then add your own words. (e.g. Toys, toys, toys away; Now it's clean-up time; Quickly, neatly, that's the way; Soon you will be done.)

Dance and Move throughout the Day
Like princesses, like pirates, with happy feet, with angry feet. Fill the day with a wide variety of musical styles and join in the creative expression while building musical awareness and a wonderfully expressive and coordinated body. (Theirs and yours!)

-Carol Penney, Kindermusik educator and employee-owner

Music as Therapy

"Music is a therapy. It is a communication far more powerful than words, far more immediate, far more effective." Yehundi Menuhin

Direction in Movement:

It is essential to the learnng process to allow a child to experience all aspects of direction in movement (up, down, in, out, around, etc.) Neural pathways develop through experience, stimulation, and interaction. Varied experiences increase the number of neural pathways.

Music's Power

Take full advantage of music's power for learning, delight, and bonding. Nurturing a true music lover begins at birth (and probably even before).

Try following this prescription (begin practicing during pregnancy):

. Sing EVERY night at bedtime. (You don't have to be a singer...the child hears the heart behind the voice.)
. Enjoy dancing with abandon every day to favorite recording. (You don't have to be a dancer...all movement supports growth and development.)
. Accompany every diaper change with a nursery rhyme.
. Play calming music at naptime(s) or meltdowns.
. Incorporate a time to bounce to a beat. (Just bouncing steadily and stopping will evoke spontaneous giggles.)
. Rock, rock, rock.
-Carol Penney, Kindermusik educator and employee-owner

"You never know when you are making a memory."
Rickie Lee Jones

Music

Music! It's the panacea for many of the challenges that wreak havoc as children grow up. It calms babies. It brings joy to toddlers. It builds confidence in preschoolers. It develops far-reaching and long-lasting skills that grow musicians, creative problem solvers, and confident lovers of learning.

My single best advice for young parents? Let music permeate your home (and car)! Music makes parenting more joyful. Music helps children unfold into wonderful, responsible, caring adults. And you don't have to be a musician to bring music in your child's life

The Importance of Doing Nothing

Rocking time has many benefits, with vestibular stimulation, bonding, and listening to music being at the top of the list. Equally valuable is the opportunity during this time to just do nothing. Children need time to be stimulated and engaged, and they need time to be at leisure. This down tme is physically necessary for the brain to process the learning that occurs during structured activites and interaction.

Up and Down

Each Kindermusik class has a musical focus. The focus of up and down lends itself naturally to exploration through music and movement. The Our Time child, a sensorimotor learner, delights in the many modes of experiencing up and down.