In my last blog, Road Trip to the Olympics: The Dream of a Lifetime, I told the story of our ill-fated attempt to go to the Olympics, which was thwarted by a flu bug.  But after a 48 hour recovery period, we were ready to go!

At 7:30 AM on Thursday, February 25, we headed up I-5 toward the Peace Arch border crossing at Blaine, Washington.  Our Olympic mobile contained 2 moms, 4 kids and lots of happy anticipation, especially mine.

We arrived at the Bridgeport Sky Train Station where we planned to park and ride into the city.  The garage was already full, however we noticed many people parking in a mud lot underneath the train tracks.

“Can you park here?”  I asked a man and his wife who were heading into the station. “I don’t know.  We walked from our hotel.  We are from Holland,” the man replied in his Euro accent.  Wow!   We were having what I envisioned in my Olympic experience and we hadn’t even parked the car yet!

After parking, we purchased our $9 all day train tickets and boarded the Sky Train. We rode to the Waterfront stop, several blocks from the Olympic flame Cauldron and the Pacific Coliseum where the figure and speed skating events were taking place.

Along the quarter mile walk to the Cauldron past the Coliseum, we saw vendors selling Olympic pins.  Each Olympic venue and sport had a collectible pin.  Volunteers carried some in their pockets.  If you were lucky, they had one to give to you when you asked.   The kids loved this giant treasure hunt taking place all over the city.  They collected four pins each and bought two more.

We picniced fifty feet from the impressive Olympic Cauldron. After taking pictures, we headed toward Robson Square, one of several “Celebration Sites.” On the way, we stood in line to receive a free ball cap at the Omega Plaza behind the Art Gallery.  The kids got their picture taken in a real, cherry red bobsled.

At Robson Square, a zip line was strung between two towers at a breathtaking height and distance. A juggler entertained a crowd next to an ice skating rink where the public could skate for a $2 skate rental fee.  We scored two Olympic pins there and rested our feet watching Finland beat Switzerland in hockey on the live Jumbotron outdoor screen.

Next we walked to BC Place, where the women’s gold medal hockey match was soon to begin. Streams of fans in red maple leaf Canadian jerseys flowed toward the rink.  The band and cheering crowds could be heard from outside. We were looking for one of many pavilions offering free activities. The line snaking around the Ontario house indicated a two-hour wait to enter, which was typical of the indoor venues.  We contented ourselves with the outdoor ambiance and headed off to find our souvenirs at a quaint section of town called Gastown.

As afternoon edged toward evening, our Olympic adventure wound down with the waning stamina of six-year-old legs.  We meandered back to the Sky Train for the trip home.

Though we hadn’t seen a single athlete or attended an athletic event, our expectations for our road trip had been fulfilled.  We’d been to the Olympics!  We’d seen the flame.  We met people from other countries. We experienced outstanding Canadian hospitality.  We had Olympic pins and souvenirs to treasure.  Our kids had a unique experience that would enhance their Olympic enjoyment for years to come.

I’m still smiling.  We pulled off a spontaneous, nearly cancelled, very affordable, fabulous Olympic road trip. I’ve had a dream come true. And to think I almost missed it!

-posted by Donna Detweiler, who suggests you take a road trip to Vancouver for the Paralympics coming up in March.

We all know that opposites attract!

Did you know that children learn concepts best in opposites? It’s why in your Kindermusik class, you’ll learn fast/slow, smooth/bumpy, high/low, among many other pairs. It’s why in school, addition and subtraction are taught back to back. It’s why when you begin to drive, your teacher makes sure you know where both the brake and the gas pedals are!

Learning opposites enhances vocabulary and word association, encourages sensory and motor development, develops discrimination and classification skills, and provides plenty of opportunity for fun games. The farther apart the opposite (black and white, hard and soft), the easier it is for children to master the concept. When you add an interactive approach, this learning becomes highly enjoyable.

Here’s a few “opposite” activities:

When doing these, be sure to label the opposite words. (It’s pretty easy to forget to do that, as we adults already know the vocabulary!)

• Try tasting some opposite things like sweet sugar and sour lemon.
• Sort round cans and square boxes when putting away the groceries.
• Music is full of opposites. Put on your favorite piece of Kindermusik (or music with pitch or tempo variation), and move high and low, or fast and slow.
• Sing a song silly! (High and then low, or fast and then slow.)
• Move. Go and stop. Take big steps, and little steps. Go under, go over.
• Open and shut the doors. Or cupboards. Cause seriously, if they don’t learn both opening and shutting in a pair now, your fridge is going to constantly be left open when they are a bit older!
• Identify back or front. Left or right. Short and tall. Boy or girl. Young or old. Dirty or clean. Empty or full.
• Feel the objects around you. Hard or soft? Rough or smooth? Hot or cold?
• Read some opposite books, and talk about what you see. Here’s some favorites: Dinosaur Roar, by Paul and Henrietta Stickland. Big Dog, Little Dog, by P.D. Eastman. The Foot Book, by Dr. Seuss.

Even babies learn opposites. Talk to your baby as you go throughout the day, and emphasize the opposite words with your vocal inflection. “I’m going to pick you up.” “We are going down the stairs.”

Really, the possibilities are endless. Just have fun with it!

-posted by Miss Analiisa, whose two oldest children are oil and water.

Bonjour!

As some of you know, I was off once again to see some of my family who live in France.  I love it there, and the people are so nice and inviting!  My cousin, his family and some friends live outside of Paris.  My sister and her family live in the French Alps in a small village with great skiing! The landscape is amazing and the food is incredible.  And although we live thousands of miles apart, thanks to the internet and Skype, I can visit and see my family and friends who live all over the world.  It IS a small world after all!

So here are some fun facts about France and a little French lesson too:

Capital: Paris

Language: French

Ne vous escaladez les montagnes? (Do you climb mountains?) The highest mountain is Mont Blanc in the French Alps. It rises to 4,807m (15,771 ft). Mount Blanc is also the highest peak in the whole of Europe. Btw, I could see it when we were skiing!

Vous aimez le fromage? (Do you like cheese?) More than 350 kinds of cheese are made in France.

Avez-vous une bicyclette ? (Do you have a bicycle?) Every summer more than 100 professional cyclists race in the Tour de France. The race is approximately 2,000 miles long. The race lasts up to three weeks and is held in July. The route changes from year to year.

Vous aimez l’art? (Do you like art?) The Louvre is one of the largest art museums in the world. Some of the paintings exhibited there are from the French artists Monet, Cezanne, and Renoir.  The Mona Lisa by Leonardo Da Vinci is there too.

Avez-vous faim? (Are you hungry?)  Then try some dishes such as quiche, soufflés, mousse, pâté, croissants, crêpes, French bread and my personal favorite….fondue.

J’aime la Tour Eiffel! (I love the Eiffel Tower!) Visit here for facts about the Tower.

-posted by Miss Beth, who is very glad to be back with you all in class, even though she loves to travel!

Babies and toddlers enjoy blowing. As they practice blowing, they strengthen mouth muscles and develop awareness of their breathing, which will help their language development.

With preschoolers and early elementary, blowing develops their diaphragms and builds muscle control necessary for singing and wind instrument playing.

Blowing also helps children become aware of the fact that they can use breath to make a variety of sounds, move things, blow out candles, or create a cooling breeze.

Blowing for all ages
Blow kisses – even babies can do this!
Blow through a straw into your milk, juice or water.
Blow bubbles
Play a slide whistle or a harmonica (like the one in this semester’s Our Time)
Put a dab of watercolor or thinned tempura paint on a piece of paper. Blow on it with a straw and make beautiful designs.

For older children
Put a fluffy craft feather partially into the end of a drinking straw. Blow on the other end and see how far you can make the feather fly!
Place a ping pong ball on the table. With players on each side of the table, try to blow it off your opponent’s side with a drinking straw.
Whistle
Play a duck call or kazoo

-posted by Miss Analiisa, who wants you to breathe in through your nose, and blow out through your mouth three times right now. Don’t you feel calmer?

By the time I was in Junior High, my chores included cleaning, laundry (and ironing!), milking the goats, hauling wood for the fireplace, working in the garden, and cooking full meals for my family. Can you tell I grew up in a rural area?

As much as I really didn’t like all those chores, what I was really learning were life skills. Good life skills are what enabled me to move to New York City on my own at 18 and survive.  (Though I admit that the time I got on the wrong train and ended up at Flatbush Avenue instead of the Upper East Side and didn’t get mugged or worse was luck, though it was life skills that told me NOT to get off the train!)

My children have it way easier than I did (though I’m positive every parent says that). We live in the city (so nothing to milk), we have a house cleaner who comes once a week, and I rarely iron, let alone make my children do so.

As my oldest just turned 11, and is on the cusp of adolescence, I knew I had to really start thinking about the process of parenting with the goal of letting him go.  His frontal lobe (and therefore his ability to make decisions taking into account all the long-term consequences) won’t be fully developed until he is 25, but he’s going to be ready to fly the nest long before then. (I hope!)

Although I can’t control his brain maturity, I can help him to develop life skills – aka “chores”. As I made a list of the skills he should master, it was overwhelmingly long. So, I decided to pick 4 this year, working alongside him until he’s competent, and only then adding another.

Below I’ve made a list of some life skills that every child should know, divided by age range. It’s by no means exhaustive, but meant to be a jumping off point for you. As well, keep in mind that every child develops at a different rate, and yours may be able to master some skills earlier and some later. And that’s perfectly normal.

Toddlers
How to pick up toys
How to wash hands
How to get dressed
How to come when called
How to “freeze” when told to stop
How to make a bed in the morning

Preschoolers
How to set the table
How to stir and mix, how to cut with a blunt knife
How to take sheets off the bed
How to put sort dirty and clean laundry
How to put clean clothing away
How to take on and off shoes and coat (buttons, zipper, Velcro)
How to fold towels and washcloths

Early Elementary
How to take care of a pet
How to clean the bathroom
How to answer a phone call
How to put away clean dishes
How to help put groceries and the bags away
How to clear the table and rinse the dishes
How to write a thank you note

Mid-Late Elementary
How to load the dishwasher
How to do laundry
How to fold clothes
How to vacuum
How to change sheets on a bed
How to prepare simple recipes
How to sew on a button or mend a small tear

-posted by Miss Analiisa, who can truthfully say that she had to walk to the school bus in the snow UPHILL both ways!

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.