Spatial awareness can be defined as: an awareness of the body in space, and the child’s relationship to the objects in the space. This can include spatial orientation, which is the skill that allows them to understand and comply with simple requests such as: “line up at the door” or “sit in a circle.”

Doing the Hokey Pokey in Kenya!

Spatial awareness is also linguistic. The understanding of the positional words people use to define themselves in space is essential to spatial awareness. “I am underneath the bridge….I am behind the tree.” You get the picture.

Next time you are in your Kindermusik class, check out the movement chart on the wall and notice how many of the words are directional or relational. Hoop play is one of the many activities in Kindermusik designed to promote spatial awareness…I am in the hoop, outside the hoop, beside the hoop, in front of the hoop. Another well-loved favorite is the “Hokey-Pokey” …“you put your right arm in, you take your right arm out, you put your right arm in, and you shake it all about…”

Our Time’s “Zoom-E-Oh” which demonstrates up/down, high/low, in/out, away/together, etc. Songs like these and activities like hoop play are allowing your child to learn to organize the available space in relation to themselves and in relationship to objects and other individuals.

In addition to spatial awareness, they are learning things like body parts, rhythm patterns, and a sense of direction. Spatial concepts learned through movement and exploration simultaneously develop muscle strength, coordination, self-confidence, and thinking skills. Spatial awareness helps you distinguish between words on this page and see the letters in correct relation to each other.

Which brings us to the initial question: what is the link between your child’s Kindermusik experience and his ability to read a map? Studies show that the development of spatial orientation leads to increased understanding of location and direction and even eventually the ability to understand and read a map – the point being that spatial awareness or a lack thereof has a direct impact on everyday skills that make a practical difference in our ability to navigate through life.

This same ability applies to reading and writing music on the staff, swinging a golf club, lobbing a tennis ball over the net, heading a soccer ball into the goal, or sending a baseball over the fence.

So…what if the Hokey-Pokey is what it’s all about? Well….in some respects, it is!

­-posted by Studio3Music, with thanks to contributor Theresa Case, our friend and Kindermusik Educator from Greenville, SC.

I love that a bunch of different words mean the same thing and yet are all slightly different at the same time. Think of all the words for that wet stuff that falls from the sky so regularly around here: rain, precipitation, drizzle, mist, showers, sleet, sprinkle, torrent, cloudburst, deluge.

I love that our language gives us so many ways to communicate our thoughts, dreams, ideas and heart’s desires.

So I was really excited when I sat down to plan my lessons and discovered that it was time to do “There’s a Little Wheel Turning in My Heart” or (in my own words) “There’s an itty bitty teeny weenie circumvolution oscillating in my cardiac organ”.  I love this song because it gives children a chance to play with words.

Did you know that a four year old knows approximately 10,000 words?  A toddler is in the business of accumulating all those words.  They learn one word per hour they are awake.

In order for them to know what to do with all those words they need to hear them work – in books and in conversation, in songs and prayers, rhymes, chants and poems – and they need to practice with them in all the same ways.   “There’s a Diminutive Castor Rotating in my Ticker” encourages playing with the building blocks of language. Nouns and verbs.

First, sing the song a couple of times as written using the original words. But, the real learning in this song occurs in what you do with it.

Next, ask your child what’s in their heart. This is not a rational question, of course, but children are not rational people so it works.  You can also ask what they love, or what their favorite things or people are.  (Be sure you have the video camera ready- they may just say “grandma”)

Then, ask what the item or person is doing. Again, it does not have to be rational.  Grandma could very well be skipping rope in your child’s wacky little heart.  Now you sing the song with their words-

Grandma’s jumping rope in my heart, in my heart
Grandma’s jumping rope in my heart!
In my heart, in my heart,
Grandma’s jumping rope in my heart!

There are other variations for types of words, of course.  A little girl in one of my classes today wanted finger nail polish in her heart. So rather than asking what it was doing in there- (we all know it was sparkling) we asked where it was.  It was on her toes. Naturally.  So now the song goes like this-

There is polish on my toes in my heart in my heart
There is polish on my toes in my heart.
In my heart, in my heart!
There is polish on my toes in my heart!

With an older child you can add some adjectives-

A blue car is racing in my heart, or
A big shark is flying in my heart

Remember, it doesn’t have to make sense; a child’s sense of humor is very primitive, and the incongruous is totally hysterical to them. Flying sharks are the stuff of laugh attacks that last for hours.

I play this game with all my students from Our Time through Young Child and beyond, so get the whole family involved.  And the car is a great place to play this one…

-posted by Miss Allison, who tells you to go for it. Play with your words.

Of course, that’s what we’re doing in class.  (If you’re not in Imagine That right now, you can find out how we build sand castles indoors during many of our upcoming Spring Mini Session and Summer Classes – like Creatures at the Ocean, ABC Out & About, 1,2,3 Octopus & Me, and On the Road.)

Building is a childhood favorite and jam-packed with learning.  Read on to discover how building structures strengthens each of the following developmental areas:

Cognitive: Building lays the foundation for scientific concepts such as gravity, balance, weight, and stability.  Children engage in problem solving.  “If I add another block on this side, it falls over.  Let me try it over here.”  Mathematical concepts abound: depth, width, height, length, measurement, volume, area, classification, shape, symmetry, equality (same as), and inequality (more than, less than).

Language:  Building is accompanied by conversation.  Older children talk about what they’ve built, why they’ve built it, and use their creation as the setting for pretend play. With children of all ages, adults can describe parts of the structure, ask questions, and make suggestions.

Emotional:  The best part of building a tower can be the glee of knocking it down.  Or, sometimes it falls before you want it to and you need to work through disappointment and rebuild.  (This is a great life lesson. There are many times when our first plan doesn’t work out and we need to persevere and try it again.)

Social:  Children need to learn to respect the building others have done.  They share and practice give and take so that everyone has the pieces they need.

Physical:  It takes a steady, controlled hand to add a block to the top of the tower. 

-posted by Miss Anita, whose boys love to build with the wrapped rolls of toilet paper when we bring them home from Costco, and by taping boxes and cardboard tubes together, and with pillows and couch cushions, and with wooden blocks, and with…

I love “All Fall Down” from Away We Go ”. But we’ll do it in just about every class level. From a learning perspective, it works for all age groups.  And I love it because it is just plain fun.

On the off chance that you’ve never experienced the joy of playing “All Fall Down”, let me fill in the blanks a bit. There are rules that everyone follows, so that makes it a game. Everyone gets a streamer.  Parents, too. And there is music (naturally).

The music has three cues, and each cue requires a specific reaction from the players (these are the rules):

         To start, everyone lies on the floor.
         When you hear the crank, you get up.
         When you hear the music, you dance.
         When you hear the descending scale, you fall down.
         Repeat until the music is over.

Then repeat again and again and again, until everyone is tired.  You’ll be physically tired before your child is tired of the game. 

Why? Because they love this game.  Here are some of the reasons I think they love it so much and will play it over and over again.

Reason One: The need to move is so powerful in the early years that any game or activity that encourages movement is going to be a hit.  This particular game inspires total abandonment to movement- it is all about movement. Fast movement, slow movement, moving just your arms as the streamers fly all around you, smooth movements and jerky movements- it just doesn’t matter so long as you are moving. No one feels like this game is too hard. No one feels like this game is too easy. So the success rate is 100%.   

Reason Two: This game allows young children to address one of their bigger fears as new movers and walkers – falling down. Have you ever seen a child take a tumble, pop right back up, obviously unharmed, burst into tears and dash into mom’s or dad’s arms?  They do that, not necessarily because they got hurt, but because the fall scared them.

A game where falling down is the ultimate goal is a great way to alleviate this fear.  The children are in control of the falling; they learn that they can get back up again, that their brain is in control of their body throughout its range of motion. Learning to fall down helps to put the child in control of their body.

Reason Three:  The game has a surprising intellectual element.  There are no language cues that signal what to do. The child simply learns to recognize the sound of the descending scale pattern and understand that means it’s time to fall down. 

Initially, they learn by watching the grownups.  I am quite sure they learn the musical cue, because after three weeks of playing “All Fall Down” in class the children are now anticipating it; they know when it’s coming and get ready.  A pre-schooler in “Imagine That!” dashed by me today and said “It’s coming Miss Allison!!!”  and she was dead on.  (She was thrilled to be right- such success!)  And they know how long they need to lie on the floor (it’s different each time) and they don’t move until they hear that crank. Which is connected to…

Reason Four:  This game teaches self-control – how to wait, how to follow instructions, how to share the space with a dozen other moving bodies and not crash into them. It teaches deliberate listening and deliberate action.  It is a game that is full of purpose. 

It is so full of purpose that it’s easy to forget the original intent of the activity is to teach the musical concepts of high and low.  And it does that beautifully as well.

-posted by Miss Allison, who wants you to head into the living room and clear the furniture and enjoy a few moments of unconstrained, falling down joy. 

For those of you who don’t own “All Fall Down” in your music library, you can download it right here.

En Roulant Ma Boule in Our Time is a French/Canadian song that the voyageurs and coureurs-de-bois sang to the rhythm as they paddled through the Canadian river system trading furs. Many of the songs they sung were old ballads brought with them from Europe. En Roulant Ma Boule was one such popular tune and was used a dance tune in trading posts throughout Canada.

When it is Carnival time in Panama, we like to sing, dance and play our drums to Al Tambor in Imagine That.  It is a wonderful song about playing the drum of happiness and with all the children singing and dancing along, who wouldn’t want join in?

In Village, Jasmine Flower takes us off to China where a girl enjoys the beauty of a jasmine flower.  It was even chosen as the Beijing Olympic medal ceremony theme.

Here is a version played on ancient metal bells and modern jade chimes:

And in our older classes we are off to Argentina where we learn all about little barnyard animals in My Farm, which with the help of visual aids, we sing in Spanish!  It is a fun song that also teaches about friendship!

So come join us this spring and summer to explore some of these areas and more in our World Travelers Club where we will pack our bags  and get ready to travel! We’ll sharpen reading, memory, counting, and listening skills on an imaginative musical journey to locations both in the United States and around the world.  Every song and activity reflects the culture of the places we’ll visit and expands your child’s musical mind.

-posted by Miss Beth who loves to travel inside and outside the classroom!

By the time they are 2 or 3 all they do is run.  And they are fast.  I watched the sidewalk begin to melt under the sneakers of a little guy who was running away from his mom today.  Let’s face it – they are quicker than we are, and the very act of running brings them joy.

However, running leads to accidents – heads bonked on counters and corners and knees crashed into furniture and the occasional head over heels tumble.  And let’s not underestimate the emergency room potential of two children crashing into each other while on a hypersonic mission to wear holes in the carpet. 

They have to run to be happy, but running is not safe. How do we adults (who keep these precious little people safe and happy) reconcile this dichotomy?

I gave up preventing running a long time ago in the Imagine That classroom.  Running (and going fast in general) is just too important to the children. And from a musical perspective, fast is just as valid a tempo setting as slow.  But I do have to have a way to make the running activities in class safe and integrated into the curriculum.

So yes, we run – quite a bit.  But we ALL run together and we have to ALL go the same direction around the circle.  If you are a watcher during running time you have to sit out of the running circle, so that you don’t get mowed down.  I work running into the plot by using it as a means of transportation. 

We are always going somewhere in Imagine That, and if we are going to walk, we may as well run.  And sometimes there are scary or yucky things to run away from (A dinosaur store sent us scurrying today, and an underwear store sent everyone dashing across the room last week.) 

There are other ways to go fast.  We go fast with Hot Wheel cars,  and play fast with our instruments, and we do finger plays at the speed of light. We can row a boat so fast you can barely see the oars (Well, it’s hard to see an invisible, imaginary oar anyway- but our arms are going so fast you can barely see them!)  

When we play a steady beat I make a point to emphasize both the regular beat and the double beat, so that we can go fast.  Sometimes a song allows us to even access the triple beat, and that is really, really fast. It is such joy to shake a tambourine at a breakneck pace. 

The only thing better than going fast is the ability to control that speed - to stop your flying feet on a dime and to freeze your tambourine like solid ice in an arctic blizzard.  To stop as fast and as hard as the running that necessitated the stop in the first place.  So we work on running and stopping, on driving our cars presto down the Imagine That highway and stopping them cold when the light turns red. 

Early Childhood Experts call this inhibitory control.  I call it pre-school personal power.  When the child can stop an action once it has begun (in other words, come to a squealing halt before they set the floor on fire with their speedy feet), they are showing that they have learned inhibitory control.  Next comes impulse control, which is the ability to prevent a thought form becoming an action.  Oh, yes, it’s years and years away, but it is coming…..

-posted by Miss Allison, who has worn out a large number of shoes running with her preschoolers over the years…

I see you experienced Kindermusik grown-ups shaking your heads and saying “Oh, no Miss Allison, the CD is the primary resource for at home play”.  But I really mean it- the book is the base for making your child’s 45 minutes of fun into a week-long foray into the world of learning, with music as your guide.

Sharing Time at the end of class is just a teeny tiny glimpse into the Imagine That World. The book gives you tools and ideas for extending the child’s classroom experiences, for adapting the activities to suit your child at home, and ideas to will round out your child’s developmental experience, and enrich their learning.

On the very first page of the Home Activity Book you will find a large graph that has 6 icons of childhood development – physical, cognitive, emotional, language social and emotional.  The icons point out what area the primary area of development particular activity is all about. (We all have these same basic needs, and we spend a majority of our time working toward getting these needs met.)

Each week has an activity that has been designed to guide and extend the overall learning goals of the semester.  You’ll also find that each of the activities has a Foundation Of Learning Statement.   These are the little gems of developmental information I am continually peppering you with during sharing time, but presented in writing for you to absorb in a quiet, and more reasonable atmosphere than the hustle and bustle that is our time together at the end of class.

Here are some of my favorite activities:

Lesson 2: Listen to the drums- add movement to this one and dance your hearts out to The Rainbow Dance, Not Quite KouKou and Ta-Ra-Ra Doomdeeay!

Lesson 3: Make an instrument- a shaker a drum a blitzenblogbumbeeboo…. Do bring this one to your teacher- we want to see it! (Especially if it’s a blitzenblogbumbeeboo)

Lesson 5: Make a boat- sail it in the nearest pond- take a picture and show it to your teacher.  If your boat survives her maiden voyage we’d like to see her, too.

Lesson 9: Make a map of our journey- or a journey you’ve been on.  (Just a note- this activity is focused on a map of a train journey, and I am pretty sure we will still be at sea when week nine comes around.  So don’t fret if your child insists there is not a train in class- we are just not there yet- and boats need maps, too- they just call them charts instead of maps)

Lesson 12: Rhyming nonsense words.  This activity goes with Tippity Tippty Too, the very cute book that we will read in class.  Wait until we’ve read the book in sharing time to do this activity with your child. But don’t wait to do rhyming words- especially those of you with four year olds!  Re-write The Ants Go Marching, or Down By The Bay, and rhyme yourself silly.

Lesson 13: Make an animal mask.  Your teacher wants to see this one, too.  But we won’t use it in class, so you can do it anytime your child is particularly non-human.  You may need to do it more than once… and don’t limit yourself to animals.  My son- the one who was a bat/eagle/velociraptor for years and years- now claims to be an alien….

Lesson 14: Story telling.  This is an incredible opportunity to make language come alive for your child.

I actually like many of the weekly activities in this book, so don’t let it languish on the shelf.  And don’t forget the words and the music for all the songs are in the back, and there are suggestions of things to do there as well.  And mostly- take time to play with your child, to sing and to dance and make fun things.

-posted by Miss Allison, who says that you’ll never forget the wonderful times you have together, or regret the time spent making play meaningful.

Books offer a wonderful source for children to hear our language in action. There are lots of things you can do with a book besides reading it: count things, identify objects and colors, find opposites and matches. But the text is the heart and soul of a book and together with the illustrations, they create another reality for your child to visit, rhymes to discover and characters to fall in love with. 

Your Kindermusik Literature Books aren’t related to the toyshop plotline of this class. As Jack and Hans travel around in the “trips” portion of the plotline, they meet storytellers everywhere they go – and reading is an integral part of the Kindermusik classroom experience. (A lot of parents wonder if the books should “match” the curriculum, but it’s really all about good literature and the specific developmental purpose the books serve.)

Story time in class is a social experience. Yes, it’s about the book and the language, but it is also about the jostle in the circle, making sure everyone can see, learning to wait your turn to contribute to the conversation about the book, using words to solve the social difficulties that happen whenever more than one child is on the same physical space.   

The reading you do with your child at home serves an entirely different purpose – you can focus more on the text, illustrations, and content. A book read at home can be twice as long as a book in class. A child will sit in your lap for much longer than in a crowded circle on the floor. The emotional grounding that full body contact provides gives you the opportunity to really delve into a book. 

Here’s a really fun thing to do, even if you don’t have Tippity, Tippity, Too: You are going to read the lines in a slightly different order than written in the book.

Read: Tippity tippity too. Who are you? Tippity, tippity tat. I am a ­­­_____. Your child will see the visual cue on the page and fill in the word “cat”.

Do this for each page. The last page has a whole bunch of animals on it, so all you need to do is repeat this same pattern, adding a “t” in place of the first sound or blend of the word. Like “tamel” for camel, or “tion” for lion.

Now use this same pattern for items in the room (you might need to point at the object if your child needs a hint): Tippity tippity too. Who are you? Tippity, tippity tireplace. I am a ­­­_____.  (fireplace)

Finally, use this for names of people your child knows, even if they aren’t in the room. This is sure to produce lots of giggles! Tippity tippity too. Who are you? Tippity, tippity Tindy. I am ­­­Aunt _____! (Cindy)

-posted by Miss Allison, who encourages you to have fun with words wherever you go!

But, when you get home, I want you to punch out the play set pieces for your child and put them in a container that is easily accessed.  (The zipper pouch they come in is a great place to store the pieces, and the set background can go in their backpack.) The play set is a wonderful way for your child to re-create the story from class, and to create their own story variations.  

Your child’s play set is a doorway into a world of their own making. The play set opens to a universe that has been carefully crafted to encourage language development.

When your child gets the play set out and begins the process of acting out the characters, he is practicing communication skills. He is figuring out how people talk to each other and the play set allows him to do this with pretend characters, and to try out new words and ideas, without fear off mistakes or social errors with “real” people. 

Conversation is a complex process, and requires a great deal of practice.  Children need a safe place to figure out how to put words together to communicate an idea.  Pretend play gives children the necessary space for practicing. So, whether he is playing Super Heroes or house with his friends or playing alone with his Kindermusik play set, he is learning how to master the complexities of our language and the nuances of words. 

Children learn a great deal of what they need to know from conversing with adults, but they need these forays into the imaginary world for rehearsing what they’ve learned.

-posted by Miss Allison, who loves all the funny and clever and imaginative conversations your children have every week in class!

Tempo allows us to introduce some of the beautiful Italian terminology that all musicians use.  Largo means slow. Adagio means moderately slow, but largo is the very slowest tempo marking there is. (I do admit, though, that the word adagio is a more beautiful word than largo…) 

When a child moves their body slowly, they are mastering gross motor muscle control.  I love to watch them move in slow motion because they don’t really know how to move slowly. Some of them do a stop motion technique – they move and freeze, then move and freeze over and over again. Some of them inch along; their bodies full of tension and seemingly ready to explode with full-blown motion at any instant. 

Some of them just stop and watch me (We do lots of slow motion activities in acting classes, so I am really good at it!) I know they are watching me so that they can figure out how to do it – and soon they begin to try to stretch out their movements, and extend their limbs to the farthest point away from their bodies. Their facial expressions slow down and delight fills their eyes as they begin to realize that they are suddenly in control of this marvelous thing they call their body. 

Because, let’s face it, when you’re a preschooler, you very often feel as if your body is in charge of you. The need to move is so overwhelming that even when your internal child knows you need to sit, like for circle time, your body is demanding that you move, and mostly you feel powerless to stop it.

Learning to move slowly assists in giving your preschooler the much needed confidence they need to know that they are, indeed, in charge of their body. 

A Simple Way to Practice at Home
Put on some slow classical music and have a slow motion dance. You may need to invent a story (boys are more likely to require a reason to move slowly) to explain WHY you want them to move in slow motion. Maybe their super hero persona has been zapped by a slow motion ray by their arch nemesis, or their fire fighter persona is trying to walk through a vat of maple syrup to save a kitten in a burning tree… any little scenario will do. A prop will make this game more fun and loosens up their inhibitions- and yours too! Scarves and streamers are really good options. For you super hero – a cape is always best.  

Don’t have slow classical music? Go to iTunes and search for LARGO. Most classical composers named their music in descriptive terms, so the tempo setting is often listed in the title. I also searched for LENTO (just a little faster than Largo) and ADAGIO. One word of caution: I would steer away from anything with lyrics because the story in the song may inhibit your child’s motions, and creativity. Instrumental music allows them to create their own story.

-posted by Miss Allison, who sends you off you to search for LARGO. Let today be a cyber shop and dance till you drop day!