Studio3Music Blog

Archive for the ‘Imagine That’ Category

Jan
11

Playing with Tempo

Posted in Child Development, Imagine That, Things to do, Uncategorized

We’ve been playing with tempo recently in Imagine That. Preschool age children love learning tempo, because no matter how long we spend on slow, they know we will eventually get to fast – and that means running!

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!

Tags: dancing, listening, Miss Allison, music, parenting, preschoolers, pretend play, Things to do

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Nov
17

What shall we do on a rainy day?

Posted in Imagine That, Our Time, Things to do

We’ve had a lot of fun coming up with lots of creative rainy day play ideas in my Imagine That classes for preschoolers: from drawing, to reading a book, to traveling in a space ship! The class has been traveling (in our musical imaginations) to Grasshopper Park on a Tricky Trail. It zig zags, curves, and spirals all the way there. These three shapes are the basis for all of the letters children will need to write!

So, get out some paper and crayons and see how many colors you can use as you draw zig zags, curves, and spirals. Tape the paper to the wall. Writing on a vertical surface is easier and less frustrating for young children, as they need to make large motions with their arm and shoulder. Not until about 2^nd grade do children begin to move only their wrists and fingers when writing.

Then, get some blue or green painters tape, and make zig zags, curves, spirals and straight lines all over the floor to make your own Tricky Trail. Run, hop, crawl and tiptoe over your trails while you sing “What Shall We Do”. The version I’ve included here is from ABC, Music & Me, and says “What Shall We Do on a Rainy Day?” The regular lyrics are on your See What I Saw CD.

What Shall We Do! (Click on the link to play the music.)

When you get tired of traveling on your tricky trails, turn them into roads for your cars and build a city with blocks and boxes and anything else you have around the house to build with.

-posted by Miss Beth, who likes zig zags best!

Tags: Miss Beth, physical development, preschoolers, Things to do

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Nov
16

A Plague of Frogs

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

There has recently been a plague of frogs in my classroom. They cannot hop independently, and they are not slimy. They do make noise, but only when you hit them with something! These frogs are lovely, hand painted, wooden instruments called guiros. These manipulative give the children opportunity to work on many different skills and learn some fun new songs.

I’ve enjoyed watching the children with the frogs over the last several weeks, as they learn to say the different frog sounds and choose what each color of frog says. I realized that I used a song that is not on your CD, and then changed the song from its original format to serve my educational goals. (This is an age old tradition in the folk song world called piggy-backing.)

Now that many of you are going to be having a frog guiro or two come live in your house, I wanted to give you the instructions for the song we did in class, plus a couple of other songs you can do with your frog.

The melody for “Gang Goon” is an old girl scout song, and has had many different lyric variations over the years. I know I learned the melody as “Great Big Globs Of Greasy Grimy Gopher Guts” as a grade school kid. My cousin, Britt, and I wrote endless variations of this particular version; all of them full of alliterated nasty things floating on McGilligan’s pond.

We once cleared a campground in New Mexico of a rowdy bunch of RV campers by marching up and down behind their camp signing this lovely little ditty for hours. They left the next morning. (And you doubted the power of song to change the world!) We also flooded the roads in the campground by building a fabulous little dam on the river so we could go swimming and spotted Big Foot – but those are other stories….

So here are the words and the instructions for Gang Goon. This is the frog version rather than the alliterated, gross version. I’ll leave your children to learn that one on their own. The instructions for what you do with your striker on the frog are above the lyrics. The frog, of course should sit placidly in your palm while you sing and play. (That’s the benefit of wooden frogs- they don’t hop away!)

Click on the play button to hear the song:

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scrape scrape tap
Gang goon went the little green frog one day

scrape scrape tap
Gang goon went the little green frog

Scrape scrape tap
Gang goon went the little green frog one day

scrape scrape scrape
And they all went ging gang goon!

tap swish your striker
But we all know frogs go Lahdeedahdeedah!

Swish your striker swish your striker
Lahdeedahdeedah! Lahdeedahdeedah!

tap swish your striker
But we all know frogs go Lahdeedahdeedah!

scrape scrape scrape
They don’t go ging gang goon!

The motions with the striker and the frog stay the same as you go on to the other verse. You simply change what the frog says, like to ribbitt. The frog that says croak also gets an adjective change to big, slow (a tempo change is nice here, too) and the frog that says SHHHH is a quiet frog.

You can change the animal in the song and add all kinds of adjectives and sounds, and turn this little song about a frog into a whole lesson on how words work, how we form them in our mouths and how much fun they can be to play with. This is a great way for kids to learn how language works.

Woof Woof went the tiny brown poodle dog….
Meow went the black and white cat
Moo Moo went the Holstein cow
But we all know they all go Lahdeedahdeedah!!!

-posted by Miss Allison, who is glad the plague in her classroom these past few weeks wasn’t bees – or fleas!

Tags: Miss Allison, music, Things to do

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Nov
11

It’s not a hula-hoop, it’s a puddle!

Posted in Child Development, Imagine That, Our Time

In Kindermusik, it’s rare to ever call hoops by their actual name; usually they’re mountains, meadows, or even puddles. In fact, last week my toddlers we’re ecstatic to “hop-a-doodle” around their “meadows.” With my early elementary kids, they loved playing the rhyming “Dr. Foster” game with their “puddles.” Even my preschoolers were looking forward every week to taking the “tricky trails” with their imaginary friends in our story “Josh and Katie.”

At the end of the week, I realized that a bunch of plastic 2 dimensional circles managed to not only thoroughly entertain all the children, but more importantly helped them learn important skills like how to jump on one foot, how to communicate with each other to go through “the tunnel”, and even how to work on their special awareness. All these important learning concepts were addressed by using something that costs around $5.

Funny thing is, in the same week, I was talking to a dad at my preschool, and he was mentioning how he just spent $30 on a toy that was supposed to be geared to his son’s learning, yet after the first week, his 3-year-old never touched it.

So if children can make a hula-hoop be a mountain, or a puddle, or a meadow, and never tire of it, then what separates the hoops from that very expensive gadget at the toy store? Why do they love the cardboard box more than the toy inside?

It all boils down to how children play. Both parents and childhood professionals alike can tell you children not only love to pretend but it’s how they learn. Children can grow in all domains of development through play. Often, when children pretend, they associate an identity with an object in their game. A block is not simply a block, it’s the start of their hospital. Then more blocks become the road they need to connect it to their house. Then perhaps from the hospital, the children will decide to use their scarves as wings and become helicopters, spinning away onto another game, and so on. We call these objects endowed objects because the scarves, for example, would never be called those; they would be endowed to be butterfly wings.

We see these elements of pretend play particularly in children 3 years old and up, however children learn these skills much earlier, in toddler hood. That is why in Kindermusik classes, we use these elements as the basis for the songs and activities. In fact, manipulatives in Kindermusik such as hoops, scarves, and streamers all have one thing in common: they are open-ended. The more open-ended an object is, the more roles it can have in play.

We see children assign multiple identities to an object all the time. One day, a scarf is a butterfly wing, but the next, it’s a leaf. When children can use an object in their play in many different ways, they will pick it up again and again. Children can play with legos for years because it can be so many different things! When children are autonomous and own their learning, they not only enjoy learning more, they retain it better. This comes from choosing how to learn a certain concept.

So when you’re at the store this holiday season, think about that toy you’re buying and if it will be worth the cost. Some of those higher-priced toys are really cool, I am a big fan of some of those science-oriented toy stores, but some are just too closed-ended to keep our children’s attention with their growing minds!

-posted by Teacher Aaron, who still has his first set of legos!

Tags: language development, physical development, preschoolers, pretend play, toddlers

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Oct
13

Self-identity. Who am I?

Posted in Child Development, Imagine That, Our Time, parenting, Symphony Concerts, Village

Our first Symphony Serenade Concert this year falls on Halloween, so you can imagine what the Seattle Symphony wanted our subject matter to be! In the process of writing the script, I got to thinking. What is it about Halloween that kids like so much?

I honestly don’t think it’s the candy (though that’s what may first come to children’s minds!) I think the pleasure of Halloween is linked to the emotional developmental milestones that young children are working through in the first 5 years of life. It is emotional maturation (specifically, the development of self-identity) that drives a child’s growth in all other areas.

The process that children go through to build self-identity is often difficult for the grownups to understand. Most of us don’t remember this part of our own development, which happened between 18 months and 5 years. We may remember events and people ( I remember a snowstorm when I was barely two and my great grandmother who died when I was four). But I don’t recall a lot about the process of becoming who I am. So when our children begin this journey, it may be a mysterious process for us.

We all love the endearing part of the process that happens at about 18 months. There is lots of peek-a-boo and hide and seek games. Your child comes when you call their name; usually at a run and straight into your open arms. They call you “mommy” and they are fully aware now that it is your name. By this point, you can play the “where’s your nose, where’s mommy’s nose” game, and they know the difference between you and them.

Then there’s the irritating side. They fall on the floor in the middle of the grocery store and wail like a banshee because you won’t let them climb up the cereal display. They smack the child who lives next door and snatch away a toy, and then lay on the floor and wail like a banshee when you take it away and give it back to the other child. Who, by the way, won’t play with it anyway because she’s also lying on the floor wailing like a banshee. And they wail like a banshee when you leave them with grandma to go to a movie with your spouse. And this is the grandma who lives 3 doors down and sees the child everyday of their life, not the one who lives far away and came for a visit once when they were a newborn.

Both the irritating and the endearing parts of this process are normal. As a child begins to separate their identity from their mother (somewhere between 16 and 18 months) they bound away from her like a joey escaping the pouch (that’s the screaming like a banshee part) only to bound right back in again and make your heart swell in your chest with emotions that are truly beyond words. (That’s the endearing part.)

A child beginning to discover WHO they are is only the first half of the journey to individualism. This part of the process takes a little less than two years to be completed. During this period a child acquires language and learns to express himself. Wailing like a banshee still occurs every now and again, but it is less often. Children move from parallel play to cooperative play, and begin to make real friends. They potty train and become more and more independent. They are growing up.

By assisting them out of the pouch and helping them back in, we provide a safe and nurturing environment for this process to happen.

But this is only one half of the journey. The second half of the journey is about the world of imagination; the world where costumes are a part of everyday life, where invisible friends come to dinner, and fears stalk the bedroom after dark.

Our concert theme in October is all about self identity, and how children go about becoming individuals. We will address the first half of this adventure through peek-a-boo play and hide and seek. By identifying a child by his or her name we can help them to separate from us, and grow into strong individuals. (And if we do it in a song, it’s just more fun!)

We will also explore the importance of costumes, and the nature of fear, and some of the things that help children cope with those fears. Unfortunately for us grownups, these fears are neither rational or reasonable, and certainly not logical! But having the tools to help our children deal with these upsets makes parenting much easier.

There is a musical focus as well, of course. A perfect choice (if I do say so myself) for the spookiest night of the year: music in major and minor tonalities. There will be some new instruments to meet – and a couple of familiar ones as well.

So, come back next week and I’ll talk about the second stage of the developmental process of building identity, and give you some more teasers about the show.

Tickets are available now here – so get them while you can!

-posted by Miss Allison, who is looking forward to seeing you at the symphony on October 31st!