How To Have Fun This Summer!

Announcing: A Special Drop-In Class this Summer!

Please join us on Monday Mornings at 10:00 am Starting July 5th for special classes at my home studio for the summer: 5950 SE Kelly St, Portland! To sign up call 503-708-2827 today!

Bringing children of all ages together provides a dynamic and integrated learning experience for everyone. So we took favorite Kindermusik songs and activities like “Shake, Shake the Apple Tree” and “hammocking” and rolled them into a fun, family class where each child is welcomed and valued and family “together time” is celebrated and cherished.

Family Time Curriculum Description

Age Range: newborn through 7 years

Class Structure: 8 classes in a semester for the summer
Class Length: 45 minutes each week
Class Size: 6-7 families with at least one caregiver per family
Cost: Drop-in fee $5.00 per class or $40 for semester
Home Materials: including a Family Activity Guide, Hand and Finger Puppet, Two CDs of music from class, two instruments, and two literature books cost: $60.00

What Families Experience in Class:

• Singing -- From the first “Hello” song to the last “Goodbye,” exploring a variety of musical styles and genres leads children to find their own voice. Plus singing helps with memory and recall, physical development, creativity, and socialization.
• Assorted Movement -- Whether moving as a family, as a class, or as individuals, Family Time movement activities enhance coordination skills, create opportunities for imitation and exploration, and give everyone something to smile, rock, bounce, or dance about.
• Story Time -- Reading aloud to children stimulates their curiosity, expands their knowledge, and broadens their understanding of language.
• Family Jam -- Children as well as adults will love selecting a unique instrument and joining in one big class jam instrument play along session each week.
• Musical Concepts -- Fun engaging activities bring out the musicality in everyone, from the youngest member of the family to the oldest. Families learn more about music as they learn more about each other.
• Expert advice -- A Kindermusik educator explains how the musically based activities enhance each child’s complete development.

• Learning continues at home -- With the home materials, the learning and bonding continues at home with the child’s best teacher—the parent!

In Make Way for Music, families will sing, dance, and move their way through an exploration of several elements of music: beat and rhythm, concepts and contrasts (such as staccato and legato, high and low, the major scale, and arpeggios), the human voice, instrument families, and ensemble. They’ll engage in developmentally appropriate activities that the whole family can enjoy together, including fingerplays, songs, circle dances, story time, and family jam.

Sign Up Today!
Call 503-708-2827
Free set of egg shakers to all
who sign up for the semester!

I love Kindermusik!

Kindermusik International: the Company Behind your Educator
Posted by Kindermusik International

These days consumers give serious pause when considering the company behind their favorite brands. With recession, product recalls, harmful ingredients, investment scams, CEOs going to jail, and so on. Whew! It's enough to make us think twice about with whom we exchange our hard earned dollars for products and services.

Making the choice to entrust our children to others is among the most important work we do as parents. As a Kindermusik parent, you rely on both the Kindermusik licensed educator and Kindermusik International, the publishing and training company behind your teacher.

Kindermusik teachers are experts in early childhood music, trained to follow a proven, research-based curriculum, and a delight for your children to be around. I have trusted these teachers with my own children and I delight in the fabulous work they do for our communities. If you go to Kindermusik, you know them well.

But Kindermusik International (KI), the company that stands behind them, is perhaps less visible to you. We are North Carolina based and 100% owned by our twenty-seven employees. We have no investors to satisfy. No dream of going public. Our dreams get fulfilled every day: doing our life's best work in service of the extraordinary music educators who teach and delight you and your child.

Before KI, many of us worked in taller buildings, wore suits and ties or dresses (as 19 of us are women), and were taught to obsess about profits. KI is our second career - the one where we work together to "do good" rather than simply to "do well." Many of us, myself included, have been on this musical mission for fifteen years or more, an uncommon allegiance in today's transient workforce. We are bound together by doing the hardest and most meaningful work of our lives.

I refer to KI as a sustainable social enterprise, not a company. Above all, we seek to do no harm: that is, always putting the needs and safety of families. This is why we invest relentlessly in product safety testing. Next, we focus our efforts on supporting our educators, for making a livelihood as a music teacher is not for the faint of heart. Finally, we aim to honor our communities: our environment through sustainable products and packaging; our world of less fortunate children through our outreach and scholarship programs.

Our goal is simple: make this world a more musical place for children - today and for generations to come.  -Michael Dougherty, CEO of Kindermusik International

Why Counting On Fingers Counts!

Learning to count accurately and efficiently, both up and down, is a skill known as "number sense."  Fingers are counting tools that you always have with you. Putting up one finger at a time will help children become familiar with numbers, which will lead to an understanding of all other aspects of math. Activities such as Hickety Pickety Buttercup give children the opportunity to practice thier number sense. (Fromboluti and Rinck 1999)

Activity:
Practice counting with fingers
Hold up one hand with your palm facing your child. Point to and count each finger. Hold up a few fingers and say the rhyme (below), inserting the number of fingers you are holding up into the words. Point to and count each finger, inviting your child to count along on their own fingers

Hickety Pickety Buttercup
(by Linda Swears)
Hickety pickety buttercup,
How many fingers do I hold up?
(Three) it is and (three you say.
Please play (three) for us today.
ONE, TWO THREE!

How many fingers do I hold up? What else can we count? Point out noses, elbows, shoes, toys, etc.


Teaching about Numbers and Counting
(Notes for teachers and parents)
Taken from: Ed.Gov: U.S. Department of Education Teaching Our Youngest: A guide for preschool teachers and child care and family providers, http://ping.fm/R4QA2

Many children enter preschool with some knowledge of numbers and counting. They can count five to ten objects accurately and can also read some numbers. But many other children have not developed this knowledge. These children in particular need many opportunities to learn the words for numbers, to count things, and to learn to read and write numbers.

Parents:
You can help your children to learn about numbers and counting in many ways, including these informal ways:

• Make pointing to and counting objects part of your daily routines.
• As you pass out the juice cups at snack time, point and count the cups; as you pass out pieces of paper for an art project, point to the paper and count the pieces; count boots as you help take them off; count the stairs as you walk down them.
• As you point and count, get your child to count with you. Children need to hear and practice things a lot in order to learn them.

Teacher Talk

• Let's all count the pictures on the wall.
• Help the children learn to answer the "how many?" question.
• Let's count the puzzles on this table.
• Now let's count the games on the table.

Parents:

• Children like to point to and count their fingers, their legs, and their ears. Help them do that.

Here are some other activities that you can use to help the children with numbers and counting:

• Use different types of macaroni. Encourage them to sort the different types and then count them.
• Have materials on a choice shelf such as rubber teddy bears and colored cotton balls.
• Give children rulers and let them measure different things around the room.
• Teach the children counting songs and rhymes. You can play counting games with many different actions such as jumping and clapping. As children learn number words, they can count more actions.
• As you and the children sing counting and rhyming songs you can add and take off felt board pieces that represent objects in the song.

Teacher Talk

• We're going to clap three times. (The children clap three times, counting for each clap.) How many times did you clap? (The children say, "Three times.")
• We're going to jump five times. (The children jump five times counting each jump.)
• I am going to clap and I want you to listen for how many claps you here. OK, now you clap the same number I did.

Parents:
Here are some ways that you can help your children learn to recognize and write numbers:

• When they play with number puzzles, encourage them to say the numbers as they put the pieces in the puzzles.
• Have them include numbers in the pictures that they draw and in the words and "stories" that they write. For example, "What's the street number for your house that you drew?" "Wow, you wrote a long story. Can you number all of those pages?"
• Read and discuss number and counting books, pointing and counting the objects on each page.
• Encourage the children to make their own counting picture books by cutting and pasting pictures of objects on pieces of paper or by using stickers. The children can count the objects and write the number of the total on each page.
• Keep pencils, crayons and paper around the room so that the children can make lists.

In addition to learning about counting and writing numbers, young children need experiences that will help them to learn words and ideas that are particularly important to their future success in arithmetic and mathematics. You can help children by

• Using words such as same, different, more than, less than, and one more as you compare groups of objects.
• Naming the first, second, third, fourth, and last items when you talk about things in a line or a series. For example, when cooking, ask the children, "What do you think the first ingrediant will be? Ok, what is the second thing we should add to the bowl?"
• Using location words: in back of, beside, next to, between.
• Teaching them to learn to recognize, name, and draw different shapes, and by combining some shapes to make new or bigger shapes.
• Making comparisons between objects: taller than, smaller than.
• Measuring things first with measures such as string or strips of paper and then with rulers, scales and measuring cups and discussing why we need to measure things.
• Arranging groups of objects according to size-from largest to smallest.
• Helping them learn to copy patterns and to predict what will come next.
• Matching objects that are alike.
• Describing similarities and differences among objects.
• Sorting objects into groups by a given feature (the same color, the same shape) or by class (animals, cars, buildings). Discuss why the groups of objects are the same.

Babies and Music

Kindermusik Village: Notes from Cock-a-doodle-MOO!

"Musical awareness is observable very early in life. [Howard Gardner, educational theorist who developed the theory of Multiple Intelligences] states that it emerges the earliest of all the different kinds of intelligence. The Papouseks, highly respected developmental researchers from West Germany, report that infants as young as two months can match the pitch, intensity, and melodic contour of the other's songs, and at four months infants can match the rhythmic structures as well. These researchers feel that infants are even more
predisposed to these aspects of music than to speech (Papousek, 1982)."

"Theories of Child Development and Musical Ability," by Sally Rogers from
Music and Child Development, ed., Franz L. Roehmann and Frank R., Wilson, pp. 2-3.

Your Baby's Musical Life

You may have already noticed that your baby is listening attentively to music. He may react to different types
of music in different ways. He may become alert, move excitedly, relax, or even doze off depending on the nature of the music. By filling the spaces of Baby's day with music we are teaching him the many roles that music can play throughout his life. Music can help him relax, cope with feelings, celebrate, create, and express beyond verbal capabilities.

Musical Variety in Kindermusik Village

Kindermusik Village introduces a great variety of music, representing diverse cultures, styles, and tonalities, as well as varied instrumentation and voice types. Cock-a-doodle-MOO! features Cantonese Lullaby, a soothing, traditional Chinese song; Hey Diddle Diddle, a simple, traditional English rhyme and song; Ritsch, Ratsch, a lively Swedish folk song, and Armenian Lullaby, a relaxing song in the minor mode. Not only will your baby enjoy reacting to these different styles of music emotionally and physically, but intellectually it is
important that your baby experience this music. We tend to appreciate and enjoy listening to music that is familiar.  By exposing your baby to a broad selection of music at an early age, you will help him have a rich "repertoire" of familiar sounds and styles that will make more music accessible and interesting to him throughout his life.

Music at Home

Allegro! Andante. Adagio.

Pick a song and sing it to baby slowly and then quickly. See if you can tell from Baby's response
which tempo he prefers. Which do you prefer?

Dance!

Play Skip to My Lou and dance with Baby using fast, pointed movements. Then play Little Boy Blue and slow dance with her. Try continuous, sweeping motions.

What Time Is It?

Play different types of music for different times of the day. Perhaps you could play Simple Gifts when it is time for a nap, and then play The Merry Farmer when it is time for active play.

A Musical Treasure Hunt

Explore everyday objects with Baby to see what sounds they make when you strike them with a spoon or shake them. Does there seem to be an object or sound that Baby is particularly interested in or finds humorous? Did you find something that you never expected to be musical?

"Children must receive musical instruction as naturally as food, and with as much pleasure as they derive from a ball game...and this must happen from the beginning of their lives."  -Leonard Bernstein

So, is Kindermusik just for kids?

Yes, Kindermusik is for kids of all ages. No doubt about it. Their ears open and their eyes widen. They blossom before your very eyes in music class.

Yes, Kindermusik is for kids of all ages. No doubt about it. Their ears open and their eyes widen. They blossom before your very eyes in music class.


But here's something you may not have considered: Kindermusik is for parents too! In fact, parents tell us that they get as much out of Kindermusik as their kids do. Think about it -- with Kindermusik you have a special time each week that's set aside just for you and your child. In class, you'll learn all kinds of great things you can do at home to help your child continue to grow. What parent doesn't love that?

Parents in our Village (age newborn to 18 months) especially tell us that they can't wait to get to class to socialize and connect with other adults. Many lasting friendships have formed on a Kindermusik mat. (Check out this great story about a singing duo who met at Kindermusik.) At Kindermuisk you're surrounded by parents who have a child the same age as yours, so it's easy to make connections.

So, yeah, your child will love Kindermusik. But we're pretty sure you'll be looking forward to class just as much!