Active Learning

It has been said that on average we remember

20% of what we read
30% of what we hear
40% of what we see
50% of what we say
60% of what we do
90% of what we see, hear, say and do
(this now becomes Active Learning)

Source - Accelerated Learning for the 21st Century by Colin Rose and Malcolm J. Nicholl

The "birds eye" above the note is a fermata.

Integrated "active" learning is what you'll experience in every one of our Kindermusik classrooms. For instance, take a fermata. A what you say? (Look left fora picture.)When you come across a fermata in music, it means to hold the note or the rest, usually as long as the conductor tells you to.

Now, you might think a 15 month old has no use for a fermata. And you'd be right. However, a 15 month old does need to learn what the fermata can teach him. To pause, hold and wait until he's told to start again. What parent doesn't want that?

To teach the concept of a fermata, we get out the parachute and sing a song. One of the lines is "Hop up, my baby, three in a row". At the word "up", we lift the parachute up and hold it. The teacher then tells the class when to bring the parachute down by resuming to sing the rest of the phrase "my baby." The pause (hold) in between "up" and "my baby"is the fermata.

The children learn and rememberthe fermata concept (pause, hold and wait until told to go) by integrated active learning:

Hearing the parachute move up and down
Seeing the parachute move and stop
Holding onto the handles and moving the parachute up and down
Feeling the wind as the parachute moves up and down
Hearing the music stop (or stopping singing as they get old enough to sing)

As children get a bit older, we play musical games like riding stick ponies, and stopping our bodies when we hear the music pause, and then waiting until the music instructs us to go again.

Hear, See, Say, Do. The perfect recipe for active learning.

-posted by Miss Analiisa, Studio 3, who loves that a paused "up" parachute even looks like a fermata!