We’ve heard, through our Kindermusik classes, how important it is to introduce your child to different styles of music. I’m guessing for most of you, opera has not been high on the list. The word “opera” can seem intimidating, but opera is simply a musical drama. Opera can offer many developmental benefits for your child and can be fun too! Introducing your child to opera helps increase language skills, teaches higher level thinking and creative problem-solving skills in real world situations, develops an appreciation for the arts, and stimulates the imagination.

How do you go about it? Let me help! I’ve been a Kindermusik Educator for a few years now, but have a degree in Vocal Performance studying opera. Just last year I performed with the Tacoma Opera company. I love children and I love music. Getting to introduce my love for opera to children is a passion for me. In fact, I did several operas in elementary schools while I was in college. They loved when we performed short Opera scenes for them, and they were the best audience a performer could ever have.

They laugh when it’s funny, show concern when it’s sad, and if there happens to be a big bad wolf in the story, they make sure to let the piggies know he is close by!! If you have school-aged children you might look into Northwest Opera in Schools, Etcetera (NOISE), and other groups that bring opera into the schools (Seattle Opera has had a program). You can set it up for them to come to your school!

For preschoolers, there are lots of ways to introduce them to opera. If you allow your child to watch a little TV during the day, there is a great show called Wonder Pets on Nick Jr. This is a show for preschoolers that has the feel of Operetta -a lighter version of opera with a frivolous story and some spoken dialogue. In Wonder Pets there is orchestral music throughout the show, and most of the dialogue is sung, rather than spoken.  You can watch it right here:

Since it’s not easy or wise to take a 2-5 year old to the opera, you can find videos of operas to watch at home, or books to read. Your children will be entranced by the big sets and costumes. They can dress up like the characters and use different voices for different singers – all things preschoolers love! Here is a link to a list of operas your children might enjoy and recommendations of productions to view.

The most practical way to introduce children to opera is through CDs. Now don’t just sit and listen, get up and let the music move you! There’s music in every opera that will make any child want to get up and run around the room. So, get up and move with them. The Humming Chorus from Madame Butterfly will have you flying like butterflies. There are softer musical moments that are fun to “fall asleep” to; snoring is a must! Here’s a great compilation of operatic works to march, dance and fly to.

You can also teach and experience emotions through music; a sad musical motif  can have you and your child weeping and wailing oh so silly-like. Use a scarf to dance around the room and weep and wail. Don’t forget to blow your silly noses! Light and happy sounding music will get you on your tip toes bouncing around the room. Of course, there are plenty of intense musical moments in opera that can be scary (show them your best scaredy-cat face), or creepy (creep around the room as if you are going to sneak up on someone). So don’t be afraid to move to the music, be silly and have a great time instilling a life-long love of music!

-posted by Miss Stacey, who leaves you with this quote: “To be completely and comprehensively educated means having a background in the arts. By introducing students to opera, we build and sustain cultural intelligence. … Passing on knowledge and understanding about the power of opera to communicate universal themes, ideas, and emotions ultimately enhances and betters our society….” – Dr. Joseph Piro, Associate Professor Curriculum & Instruction, Long Island University

A couple of weeks ago, my family took our first full-length road trip ever. It was, hands-down, the most fun we’ve had on vacation. I had been reading the book Kildee House to Rob. It was a Newberry Honor winner in 1950. Kildee House is about a shy stonecutter named Jerome Kildee, who retires to the redwood forest to be alone. He finds, instead, friendship for the first time in his life. He finds joy in the animals and children he learns to know, in spite of his self-imposed isolation. His quiet ways allow for the local animals and children to invade his space, and that is when the fun begins.

The book reminded me of my childhood trip through the Redwoods, and motivated me to give that same awe-inspiring experience with my own children. So the planning and mapping began.

Whenever I told other kids or teens that we were going to California to the Redwoods, without fail, they all said the same thing, “Disneyland? What are the Redwoods?” At the mention of “road trip, California and Redwoods” to other adults, I got responses like, “I remember when we went to the Redwoods when I was little. How fun!”

To me, the purpose of a road trip is the journey, not THE Destination. Now, I’m all for trips to places. San Diego has been a repeated vacation for us, and we’re planning a tour of the east coast in a couple of years. And my very favorite place in the world is Turkey. But on those kinds of trips, the focus is on getting there, and what you’ll do after you arrive.

So, in an effort to inspire your family to get on the road together this summer, here’s a few photos of the places we went:

Here's the headwaters of the Sacramento River. Yes, coming straight out of the mountain in about 5 spots. How often do you get to see that? Nathan filled up his water bottle. The water was so fresh and sweet.

Apparently, there must have been something in the chips and salsa they had just eaten at the restaurant next to the Sasquatch museum. Maybe they've got gold fever after coming out of that mine.

We took a long hike on some railroad tracks to this hidden waterfall. The cold water felt so good on our feet and faces. We also hiked to the cave behind another waterfall, where Black Bart had hid before a stagecoach robbery.

We spent two days in the Coastal Redwoods, hiking and tramping around. My kids all commented that all the ferns and giant trees reminded them of the planet Endor from Star Wars, and they kept trying to find what they thought was the actual filming location.

Banana slug hunting was a huge hit. We couldn't find any until just before we left the forest.

The Sea Lion Caves in Florence, Oregon are home to hundreds of sea lions, and is the biggest sea cave in the world. But, boy, was it stinky!

Where would you love to take your children on a road trip? What are your favorite road trips from your childhood? Leave a comment and let us all know. Maybe your memories will inspire a family to get in the car together this summer, even for a day or two.

-posted by Miss Analiisa, who says that yes, Legoland is fun. But the meadow full elk, or the group of redwoods growing into a cathedral spire, and the close-up view of Mt. Shasta are things that bring wonder and appreciation for the world, and that blows Legoland away.

These ideas in the Games for Babies Series can be played with babies 9 months and up, but my children play these well into their preschool years.

Croquet

What you’ll need:
Ping pong balls
Wooden spoons

In its simplest form, you use the wooden spoons to play a “free-form” version of croquet all around the living room. With little ones, it takes a lot of hand-eye coordination just to hit the ball!

You can also sit facing your child (with legs spread to contain runaway balls), and hit the ping pong ball back and forth between you.

As your child gets older, create a little “wicket” course with blocks or books or boxes. Have fun with it!

Chicken Ball

What you’ll need:
Feather dusters
Balloons

I have to give credit for the invention of this game to my nephew, Jared. Blow up a balloon (or two), and hit the balloon with the feather duster. Sound silly? It is. But unbelievably fun.

For older ones, place a making tape line on the floor and play with the classic rule, “Don’t let the balloon touch down on your own side”.

-posted by Miss Analiisa, whose own children and their cousins launched rocket balloons over the loft balcony attempting to land them in the growup’s coffee cups this weekend at Grandma and Poppa’s beach house. (Another fun game, but not for babies!)

I recently blogged about the benefits of parenting in community.  So, I thought I’d share some of the great ideas that my friends have come up with.  I think it’s fun to hear what ideas have worked well for others. I hope you find something helpful for your current parenting stage and needs! Of course I’ll have to add a few of my own ideas too.

Melani—“One thing that I remember doing was taking my daughter out frequently for an hour or two.  We often went to the mall to walk around — it kept both of us from getting bored, but the outings were short enough that they didn’t take a lot of preparation.”

Selena—“I loved getting my exercise before the kids woke up and before my husband left for work. I had a gym membership and I loved the feeling I was doing something to get my body back, not to mention that it gave me more energy.  Also, taking naps when they took naps gave me renewed energy.

Find a playgroup!  Get connected with other moms and give kids chance to have friends; it helps with combating depression and isolation.”

Veronica—“When my kids reached toddler age, we put them to bed at a certain time, i.e. 7:30pm, but I didn’t require that they go to sleep.  As long as they were in their beds, they could listen to stories on tape or look at books or play quietly in their beds, with a small lamp or lights dimmed in their room.  It gave me some time to myself, and they fell asleep when they were ready.  I’d check on them later and turn off the lights.

Now I have to tell my two older kids to turn out their lights and go to sleep because they can stay up really late!  Most of the time, my youngest still falls asleep when she’s ready.

Donna—“After my second was born, I always took a shower in the morning—even if it had to be a quickie because one of the kids was fussy.  I learned that the benefit to my attitude was worth letting a baby cry for 5 minutes while I did my splash and dash routine.  When I stayed in my pj’s until the baby napped, as I did with the first, I often felt less than my best.  But I must add that I’ve never been a pajama lounger.  So just be yourself!

I’ll add onto this list of “best ideas” throughout the coming months. If you have a “best idea” you’d like to share, email me at donna.detweiler@comcast.net.

-posted by Donna Detweiler, who loves to collaborate on just about anything in life—the more the merrier, as they say.

The word “discrimination” tends to get a bad rap. It’s actually a very important skill. Especially when it comes to your sense of hearing. For instance, I don’t want to open my front door, call my children by name in to dinner, and have all the neighborhood kids appear. (Well, that might be a compliment to my culinary skills, but that’s not the point.)

Here are some fun and easy activities for you do with your child to help develop auditory discrimination:

Infants (newborn to around 18 months):
You’ll do most of the work at this age. Point out the noises around you. Sounds have to be alone, rather than layered or mixed in with others. When more than one sound occurs simultaneously, infants cannot discriminate between them, even if they are very different noises.

• Say, “Listen. That is a dog barking.” Then, you imitate the dog. “Woof. Woof. A dog says, ‘woof, woof’”. Eventually, your baby will hear a dog barking and say, “Dog.”
• Ask and answer your own question. “What sound does a truck make? A truck goes ‘vroom, vroom.’” One day in the future when your little one is playing with a truck, you’ll hear “vroom, vroom”, emanating from her mouth.

In this stage, your baby is learning to associate a particular sound with a particular object. Later, he’ll use this skill to match a sound to a letter symbol.

Note: When you speak in full sentences to your baby, you’ll be demonstrating vocabulary, good grammar, and correct sentence structure. What you put in her mind will, at some point, come out naturally!

Toddlers (18 months to 3 years):
As toddlers, children continue to discriminate single sounds best. You’ll still need to name new sounds, but now they will readily imitate them back to you. Toddlers are also likely to ask what an unidentified sound is.

• You can ask questions like, “What is making that sound?” (a cow) “Can you moo like a cow?” “What does a ­­­­­­­­­­­­_______ say?”
• Toddlers can now associate sound with a process or event. “What’s that sound? … Yes, someone is knocking on the door. What does that mean?”… You are right. Grandma is here!” Also, think microwave beeping, clothes drying timer sounding, keys rattling in the lock, phone ringing.

Save the learning of letter sounds for later. And letter names have nothing to do with reading. Auditory discrimination is the best first step towards reading readiness.

Preschoolers (3 to 6 years):
At 3 and 4, preschoolers are now ready for simple layered sounds. That is, identifying a sound (like a lawnmower, and then hearing a bus drive past), and being able to recognize the sound of the bus while the lawnmower is still making noise.

• Focus now on picking out sounds. Make a game of it. Let’s say you are taking a trip to the beach. What are the things that you, the grownup can hear? Birds, waves, people talking, laughing, a ferry boat… Have your child identify a sound. He picks laughing. You listen for it, too. Now you say, “Can you also hear the waves?” He has to use his filters – turn off his ears to laughing, and listen for the waves. That is auditory discrimination.
• For 4 ½ and up, I love the Kindermusik CD called Ned Redd, World Traveler. Every song on the CD is from a different country, and the narrator at the beginning of each track will give you a choice of three different sounds to listen for, and how many times each sound occurs. There are three different “levels”, so younger and older kids (and their grownups!) can play together.

Here’s a track from Ned Redd so you can play this game right now.

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If you’d like to download the whole album (great for a car trip!), you can right here on play.kindermusik.com.

-posted by Miss Analiisa, who developed her auditory discrimination skills by practicing band music on her euphonium in the woods at music camp right next to her violin-playing friend Gwen, while blocking out Gwen rehearsing orchestra music. I am told that it sounded rather horrible to the non-discriminating!

Welcome back to the final installment of Managing Morning Madness!  Today’s tips are somewhat subjective, so I’ll give a couple examples but you’ll want to target your own trouble spot and come up with a solution that works!

Target Your Trouble Spot

Chances are, your mornings are not chaotic all over the board, but the problem can be traced down to one or two key trouble spots. Think about what it is that you never seem to get to do or the area that always pushes you behind schedule and work on it.  Don’t try to apply all of my tips at once; work on one at a time.  You’ll be more successful this way and less likely to be overwhelmed with a bunch of changes all at once.  I also suggest starting with something that can be easily fixed.  By starting “small” you’ll have success sooner, which will motivate you to tackle the next problem.

I’ve mentioned in a previous blog that shoes were a trouble spot for us and I explained how I handled it.  Another example comes from a friend of mine.  Her nemesis was her daughter’s hair.  She couldn’t seem to make it out of the house with her daughter’s hair fixed.  Her daughter has one of those heads of hair that needs to be brushed or fixed, she’s got so much of it!

My friend finally learned that unless she fixed her daughter’s hair before they came downstairs for breakfast, it didn’t get done. So she developed the habit of fixing her daughter’s hair first thing in the morning. By getting it in braids, a pony tail, or a barrette, she had it done and out of the way. Then, later in the morning, when her daughter got herself dressed, my friend didn’t have to remember to go do her daughter’s hair and when they left the house, she didn’t take a “wild child” with her.

There’s another simple solution to this same problem: keep a brush in the car.  Then you can always brush it when you get where you’re going.

So you see from these two examples (the shoes and the hair), there are multiple ways to address your trouble spot.  Think “outside the box” about solutions to your trouble spot and an idea will come to you. Try something for a few weeks and see if it makes a difference. Either you’ll have your problem solved or you’ll know that you need to try a new approach.

When the Trouble Isn’t a Task

As I talked to a few other parents, I discovered two common trouble spots that weren’t “tasks” to be completed, but much bigger issues:

• Motivating a Child to Get Ready (also known as the dawdling child)
• Abnormal Days/Change of Daily Routine (that one or two days a week when your schedule isn’t normal and you’re required to be out of the house earlier than normal)

Motivating a dawdling child is a HUGE topic and one I won’t cover here in Morning Madness. I’ll post a blog with some ideas for dawdling children in a few weeks, so check back.  But as for the problem of needing to be out of the house earlier than normal, if you slowly start to apply the steps I’ve written about in these four blogs on “Managing Morning Madness,” hopefully those “abnormal days” won’t set you back.  If you plan ahead, pack the night before, have a nutritional breakfast ready for in the car and  get your kids trained to be involved in the morning routines, you should haven’t any trouble being out the door earlier than normal…with the exception of possibly having to set the alarm a little earlier and get out of bed sooner.  But you’re on your own for that discipline!

-posted by Donna Venning, who  felt that her stress to get out the door was starting to come out in erratic driving, so she developed her morning habits so that she can leave her house in a calm, peaceful, pleasant manner, making her a safer, nicer driver!