One More Time . . .

Baby learns dimension, texture, line, and even color through touching his environment.  Simply feeling things with his hands can give him much information.  Hands are for touching and exploring.  In class we touched the drum in a variety of ways such as rubbing, tapping, patting, and scratching.  Each different touch produced a different drum sound.  Touching the same texture in many different ways gives Baby a broader sensory experience.

 

Try one of these home activities:

 

Lap Baby: Select different types of fabric such as felt, cotton, corduroy, satin, silk, and flannel.  Gently rub them across Baby’s arms and legs.  Try to alternate a soft texture with a slightly rougher texture.

 

Crawler and Walker: Cover the outside of a paper tube with one specific texture.  Make as many texture tubes as you would like using fake fur, cotton, flannel, light grained sandpaper, satin, wool, paper, and silk.  Encourage Baby to feel the different textures.  Label the texture by saying the words “soft” or “rough” to Baby during this play.

Ready for Reading

Baby’s lungs and diaphragm are developing with each breath that she takes.  Blowing long and short breaths is another way of developing the diaphragm, which is necessary for production of any speech sounds.  For Baby that cannot blow yet, blowing play allows Baby to visually track the object and develop stronger eye muscles in preparation for reading readiness skills.

 

Home Activity:

Try some blowing activities with Baby.  Baby will enjoy the cool sensation of you blowing on her face and body.  Get close to Baby’s face and let her see and feel your mouth while you gently blow.  There are many common items around the house that you can collect for blowing play.  To name just a few:  tissue paper, feather duster, cellophane paper, cotton ball, light weight piece of cloth.

 

For Safety:  Closely supervise all blowing play.

Individuality

Last week, as we shook the egg shakers to “All the Way to Galway,” each and every child discovered something new. Toddling around while shaking the eggs, tapping the shaker with Mom, or intently sitting and watching the class; each child participated in their own unique way. Each week we have the opportunity to celebrate our children’s individualities!

Each child is unique and develops at his or her own level and pace. Because of this, each child will interact with objects in a way that supports that level of learning about the physical characteristics of objects—and that means every object at hand! Kindermusik supports the many ways in which children learn: exploring, experimenting, imitating, trying out new ideas, reinforcing strengths, and developing skills.

Take a little time during your daily routines to enjoy the uniqueness of your baby—interactions with you and others, playfulness, curious mind, and music responses. The more one-on-one time with your little one, the more you will understand the level of development.

Feel the Beat!

In this week’s class the steady beat was at the heart of every activity—exercising to “Did You Ever See a Lassie?” bouncing to an old English song, “Ride a Cock-Horse to Banbury Cross,” and rocking to the calming tune of “Greensleeves.”

Steady beat is the unchanging continuous pulse in a song or chant and is an organizer for the child; purposeful and calming. Moving to a steady beat, a child develops a sense of timing, which is fundamental to the ability to organize and coordinate movements. Think of all we do that requires regularly-paced repeated motion (a sense of steady beat!): walking, running, riding a bicycle, cutting with scissors, bouncing a ball, and more.

It’s easy to find the beat in a nursery rhyme. Pick out a couple of your favorite rhymes and get the nursery rhyme beat!
Here are some ideas to get you started:
• Holding baby and walking—just add the rhyme and walk to the beat.
• Drying off baby after bath time—exercise legs up and down to a rhyme.
• Just finished dressing baby—lap bounce to a verse or two.

Bouncing along until next week!

Hi-ho, hi-ho, hi-ho and hello to you

In class this week it was a pleasure watching the joyful interactions between the adults and babies as they found new ways to greet each other. Greetings like a simple wave gesture and blowing kisses, and a handshake—the ideas are endless!

Babies begin to understand words long before speaking. During this receptive stage it is important that their surroundings are language rich with speaking, singing, and gestures. This stimulates the brain’s language centers to grow and allows the child to learn speech and language efficiently and become an expressive communicator.

Turn on the babblings and cooing conversations this week at home by surrounding your baby with your voice—talk about everything, sing your favorite songs, and make up simple gestures for “uh-oh,” “all gone,” and “good-bye.” For a little magical fascination, add a baby-safe mirror to your conversation. Keep a baby-safe mirror handy for those times in the high-chair, car seat, or stroller when it’s not possible for a face-to-face dialogue. This makes it easy for your little one to engage in a self-conversation at any time.

Welcome to Kindermusik Village DewDrops!

These eight weeks together mean a new community, magical and musical experiences, and “ah-ha” moments celebrating your little ones. You’ll learn the many benefits of Kindermusik to your growing baby and invaluable ways to take Kindermusik home, making your daily routines even more easy and fun!

 

At Lesson One you and your baby were introduced to several activities that will quickly become favorite Village routines. Weekly class routines, such as the ones listed below, help regulate your baby’s inner clock and help your baby cope with change more easily. This, in turn, allows her to develop a sense of identity within our new community.

 

Gathering Time—Let’s get to know each other before class begins!

Hello Song—What better way to start off class than by singing hello to you, your baby, and everyone?

Baby warm-up and exercise—Your little one will be physically active during the class—better warm-up those little muscles.

Goodbye Song— The perfect ending of every Village class is singing goodbye to each other.

 

Adding music and movement to any of your baby’s routines at home can make life more enjoyable for everyone. Choose a couple of your favorite songs and claim them as your routine songs—one for your early morning riser, one for diaper time, and one for quiet calming down—no matter the time of day (or night). Stay with the song and routine combo and soon your baby will start to make the song and routine association, triggering a specific response. 

An Ending and A Beginning

As we come to the end of a delightful eight weeks of Cock-a-doodle-MOO! I’d like to remember a few of our most pleasurable moments. 

• Shy smiles as babies greeted one another in Skip to My Lou
• You Are My Sunshine hugs
• Babies “on the move” in On the Farm
• Balls, balls everywhere as we sang I Roll the Ball to You
• Adult laughter as we danced our way through Jolly is the Miller
• Baby giggles while on a Hayride
• Crumpled paper bags, scarves floating in the air, instruments playing…
• And more and more…

I look forward to enjoying many more special moments together as we begin DewDrops. See you all next week! 

Many Sounds

Timbre is the distinctive quality of a sound.  In the past few weeks, we have experienced many different timbres.  The little ones in our class are developing their own “vocabulary” of timbres.  Just as we recognize the importance of developing a large spoken vocabulary, it is important for us to recognize the importance of developing a similar vocabulary for sounds.  This will help children tune in to subtle distinctions in both music and speech.

Kindermusik class is a perfect venue for offering your child the opportunity to experience a wide variety of sounds–drums, egg shakers, baby bells, woodblocks, singing, speaking, plus the host of wonderful and diverse sounds on the recordings!  Kindermusik is the best choice you can make for your child, again and again!

One More Time . . .

You have probably noticed that in Kindermusik we tend to repeat, repeat, repeat!  As the Kindermusik Foundations of Learning™ statement in this week’s Home Activity explains, repetition of experience is necessary for making and strengthening new connections in the brain.  I’m sure that you have found certain activities at home that your child enjoys over and over and over, just as we have found favorites in class.

Now that we have enjoyed the Old MacDonald song and activity for several weeks, I love watching the recognition and anticipation on the babies’ faces.  This shows us that they are taking in and processing information!  Although we as adults may become a little weary of “one more time,” repetition becomes easier for us as we recognize the benefits it has for our children!

Ritsch, Ratsch, Boom!

In class we explore a variety of musical instruments with different timbres (pronounced “tam-bers”) or characteristic sound qualities, such as the scratching of egg shakers, the ringing of baby bells, and the resonant “boom” of the drum.  As your little guy hears this variety of sounds, he is developing the listening vocabulary necessary for sound discrimination preceding language.  And if he plays the instruments, he learns that he can create a nice-sounding result.