Studio3Music Blog

Archive for the ‘Imagine That’ Category

Mar
20

Around the world in 45 minutes??

Posted in Bits and Pieces, Imagine That, Our Time, Village, Young Child

This semester we get to experience the joy of traveling around the world without leaving our own classroom. Kindermusik provides music from around the world for us to sing, dance and play along to.

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!

Tags: babies, kindermusik, Miss Beth, music, preschoolers, Things to do, toddlers

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Mar
5

Run, run, as fast as you can…

Posted in Child Development, Imagine That

I don’t know why kids love to go fast. I just know they do. To get there, they have to crawl, pull up and then cruise. Then they toddle and waddle and walk, but I am convinced that walking is not the final goal. The end product is running.

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…

Tags: kindermusik, Miss Allison, physical development, preschoolers

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Feb
22

Toys and Trips: Home Activity Guide

Posted in Imagine That, parenting, Things to do

In this blog, I want to focus on the Home Activity booklet. Kindermusik is meant to be a 24/7 kind of program, not just a weekly 45 minutes of musical fun. In order to help you (the parents and caregivers) Kindermusik International provides you with the tools you need to continue the classroom experience at home. The primary resource is your Home Activity Book.

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.

Tags: kindermusik, Miss Allison, music, parenting, preschoolers, Things to do

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Feb
9

A World of Words in Your Kindermusik Literature Books

Posted in Imagine That, parenting, Things to do

So although your play set (see my blog post yesterday), and your literature books don’t seem related – they are. These components of your At Home Materials provide different ways for your child to engage the world of words.

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!

Tags: books, kindermusik, language development, Miss Allison, preschoolers, Things to do

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Feb
8

A World of Words in Your Kindermusik Play Set

Posted in Child Development, Imagine That, Things to do

I love the play set for Toys I Make, Trips I Take. I know I always caution you in class not to open the play set in class or in the car….all those little pieces just begging to be lost or ripped by little fingers anxious to play with them.

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!