What goes up…
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…comes down with a bounce—and lots of laughter!
It’s all about learning something new the toddler way, which means challenging and inspiring that natural sense of wonder. And this week, it was about having a ball.
Toddlers don’t always realize the physical properties of a ball, and may be surprised and thrown off balance when a ball bounces back up. But, by practicing bouncing and rolling balls in class, she will learn to predict what the ball will do and move as she needs to maintain her balance and keep control of the ball.
She can use these balancing skills when learning new moves, like skipping and jumping. Rolling and catching the ball improves hand-eye coordination, which will help her with many activities as she grows.
The weekend will roll by quickly, I’ll see you Monday!
Welcome to Kindermusik Village DewDrops!
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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
Leave a CommentAs 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!
Smooth and Bumpy
Our new lesson focus, smooth and bumpy, introduces your toddler to two more important musical concepts.
A bumpy sound is called staccato. It sounds “choppy” like popcorn popping. A smooth sound is called legato, and it may sound more “flowing.” These different musical styles give music emotion, excitement, and expression.
By listening for and moving to these sounds, your toddler is improving his listening skills and developing a strong sense of music appreciation.
Hope your week goes more legato than staccato, and I’ll see you next week.
Care to share a new ritual?
By now you know your toddler thrives on routines and rituals. She’s comforted by predictability. Familiar patterns give her self-confidence and a feeling of control in a world that often feels out of her control.
Routines such as the Our Time “Hello” song, rocking time, circle dancing, and good byes form a solid structure for your toddler. These are activities she can look forward to each week.
Throughout your week at home, notice the rituals you have formed as a family and take care to preserve them. Just as in our classroom, they will bring a sense of security to you all.
See you next week, same time, same place.
Many Sounds
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.
Soaring, Soaring, Soaring
This week, try out our Run and Jump song in a new way–let your child run to you and jump into your arms. You can follow up with a rousing verse of “Soaring” as you fly through the sky!
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 him when he jumps is a display of trust and represents a level of emotional security in the relationship.
Why Music?
The following statement has come across my email in various forms several times over the last few months. I think it is important for all of us to understand the value music has in our lives. Although it is my feeling that the true importance of music is the beauty and joy it brings to our lives, some need to have a more “academic” reasoning behind the reason for learning and enjoying music.
Music is a science
It is exact, specific, and it demands exact acoustics. A conductor’s full score is a chart, a graph which indicates frequencies, intensities, volume changes, melody and harmony all at once and with the most exact control of time.
Music is mathematical
It is rhythmically based on the subdivisions of time into fractions which must be done instantaneously, not worked out on paper.
Music is a foreign language
Most of the terms are in Italian, German, or French; and the notation is certainly not English–but a highly developed kind of shorthand that uses symbols to represent ideas. The semantics of music is the most complete and universal language.
Music is history
Music usually reflects the environments and times of its creation, often even the country and/or racial feeling.
Music is a physical education
It requires fantastic coordination of fingers, hands, arms, lips, cheek, and facial muscles, in addition to extraordinary control of the diaphragmatic, back, stomach and chest muscles, which respond instantly to the sound the ear hears and the mind interprets.
Music is all these things, but most of all music is art
It allows a human being to take all these dry technically boring (but difficult) techniques and use them to create emotion. That is one thing that science cannot duplicate: humanism, feeling, emotion, call it what you will.
