Studio3Music Blog

Archive for the ‘Imagine That’ Category

Jan
10

Not so “old” Kindermusik At Home Materials.

Posted in Bits and Pieces, Imagine That, Our Time, Things to do

This post came in the form of an email from a long-time Kindermusik mom (whose boys have had Miss Beth, Teacher Aaron and Miss Allison!) Like most families, she keeps the music and instruments handy, but what about the rest? And do children really remember what they learned in class years before? Here’s what she had to say:

Owen and Patrick when they were in Our Time and Imagine That!

My little Patrick (now 3 1/2) took out our wonderfully stocked music box on New Year’s day and started doing ~ wishy washy wishy washy ‘wee’ for awhile and then Owen (now 6) found his blue blocks and started to do the same. First of all, Patrick barely talked much when we did Wiggles & Giggles, so his recall to me was amazing.

Then, I pulled out all our stuff and all the CD’s and we spent all of New Year’s day singing all our old songs, dancing and using all our gear. Patrick pulled out his puppy house from Fiddle Dee Dee and Owen searched and found his ‘park’ from Imagine That too.

We have used these items here and there all the time, and especially listen to the CD’s in the car always, but perhaps not as much as when they both used to be in class all the time.

The music instruments are always available; it was the “props” and activity books I put away, but brought them back out after New year’s and what the fun we had!

** THANK YOU ** THANK YOU** for being such an important part of their happiness.

All the best-

Margaret Klinkenberg

Tags: guest post, kindermusik, music, parenting, Things to do

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May
22

Spatial Awareness

Posted in Child Development, Imagine That, Music and the brain, Our Time, Village

Did you know there was a link between your child’s Kindermusik experience and his potential ability to read a map? It’s true….Though spatial awareness is a skill that usually comes naturally for most children, it is certainly a skill that parents can do much to promote. Using Kindermusik to encourage the development of spatial awareness is a natural choice.

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.

Tags: brain, kindermusik, language development, music, physical development, preschoolers, toddlers

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Apr
21

Play with your words!

Posted in Child Development, Imagine That, Our Time, Things to do, Things We Love, Young Child

I love words – the polysyllabic ones and the monosyllabic ones, the ones that rhyme with each other, and the ones that don’t. I love the ones that have several different meanings but only one spelling, and the ones that sound the same, but mean different things and have different spellings.

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.

Tags: kindermusik, language development, Miss Allison, preschoolers, toddlers

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Apr
16

Building for Fun – and so much more!

Posted in Child Development, Imagine That

If you are on a beach with Uncle Hans & his friend Jack-in-the-Box, you’re probably an Imagine That preschooler waiting for the cruise ship to pick you up and whisk you off on the next leg of the journey (in your musical mind!) And while you’re on the island, you should build sand castles.

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(no longer available) 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…

Tags: brain, emotional development, kindermusik, language development, Miss Anita, physical development, preschoolers

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Apr
14

All Fall Down

Posted in Child Development, Imagine That, Music and the brain, Our Time, Things to do

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.