Studio3Music Blog

Archive for the ‘Young Child’ Category

Apr
21

Dance to Learn: Preschoolers & Classical Music

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

The Class Dance – Maypole to Gavotte in G

maypole-dance There are a few class activities that always kinda make my blood run cold when I think about them beforehand. One is the maypole dance to “Gavotte in G.” We do it in Village and we do it in sharing time for Imagine That.

I don’t really know why it scares me. It always works, and the kids always love it. But the thought of doing something so structured with preschoolers and their parents, while I am completely covered by scarves and unable to see anything is a bit daunting for me. Also, because it’s a group activity that requires me to be tied up in the middle, we can’t practice it before we start the music. All I can do is to show the steps, and hope…

Well, like I said, it always works and everyone always loves it. At least one kid per class asks to do it again. And of course, we do it again because it’s even more fun when we all know what to do.

Directions for An At Home Version of the Dance
Here’s a variation you can do at home with your child. You probably don’t have enough people at home to create the maypole effect with scarves, but that doesn’t mean you can’t do a version of the same dance we did in class. The music is on your Cities Home CD #2, “Gavotte in G.”

Stand across from your child (like we do in a line dance), each of you holding onto one end of a scarf. (Two scarves is even better, one for each hand stretched across to your partner.)

“A Section”
The first part is called the “A section.” It is solo classical guitar.
Swish your scarves for 16 counts.
Take 4 steps to the child’s right in a straight line, no curve! (Since you are facing each other, you, the grown up, step to the left.)
Then, swish for 4 counts.
Lift your scarf/scarves and twirl under, swish for 4 counts.
Take 4 steps to the child’s left (your right this time).
Swish for 4.
Lift and turn for 4.
Swish for 4.

“B” Section
You’ve now arrived at the B section and a flute joins the guitar. (In class, this is where the kids take turns going under the “Dream Cloud”). For the variation, you will do open movement. So, each of you takes one scarf for free dance. You have 12 measures to cut up the rug.

“A” Section
Now you repeat the A section again. The flute section winds down to a definitive end so you can feel the end coming and be ready to start swishing again. (Since you swish for a whole 16 counts, if you are a bit late it’s not a tragedy…so long as you can keep track of the beat!)

One more “B” section. Cut up that rug again!

Finish with one more “A” section, with an extra turn at the end to finish it off. Or, if you’d like to be bit more decisive at the end, you can curtsey and bow, instead of the repeating the turn.

Here’s the Learning
Combining movement with listening allows the very busy pre-school child a chance to integrate the music, and understand with their bodies the very organized nature of the classical music they are hearing. They still need to move to learn in this age group, so pick some classical music and dance, dance, dance!

Try it With Other Music!
Most music from the Baroque (Bach, Hayden, Vivaldi) and Classical (Mozart) periods is very structured and has distinct patterns that can be broken down into movement sections. As you create some simple steps for each section, your child “hear” the patterns in the music.

Try a steady beat kick, a turn, a swing your partner Renaissance style (palms together, with a dignified turn, rather than elbows linked with a wild swing), walking on the beat in a specific direction, and trading places across the line.

Adding a prop, like the scarf, opens up your movement options. Add a swish, or a drag on the floor in a circle, or a swing your partner with the scarf in between (the center of the scarf between you is like the pivot point). Whatever you choose, assign a specific movement to a specific section of the music and you have created a dance that allows your pre-schooler to learn!

-posted by Miss Allison, who sells humungous scarves if you’d like to buy some for dancing at home. (Your teacher can bring one to class for you too.)

Tags: dancing, Miss Allison, music, Things to do

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Apr
15

Young Child: No Homework! Practice instead! Part 2 – How do you become a virtuoso?

Posted in Young Child

Practice is necessary to learn to perform a skill. According to Daniel Levitan in This is Your Brain on Music, It takes 10,000 hours of practice to reach virtuoso. That is a lot of practice.

I actually figured out all my hours of teaching Kindermusik to see what that really looks like. I have only taught 5,480 hours of Kindermusik! I added on my years teaching right after I graduated from college: 7,240. If I add the hours I was directing during that period (which was just teaching with a performance at the end instead of a test) I climb up to 7,752 hours. I tossed in my 800 hours of teaching pre-school and that brought me up to 8,552 hours of teaching. Unless I go all the way back to elementary school when I taught all the neighborhood kids how to read before kindergarten, I have not taught enough hours yet to qualify as a virtuoso. That is amazing! I’ve been a teacher since I became a grown up and the time that I have spent sleeping in the last 20 some odd years has knocked me off the virtuoso pedestal!

Wolfgang in gala costume, probably painted by Pietro Antonio Lorenzoni, 1763. The costume was a gift of the Empress Maria Theresa.

So, then I wondered how long it would take a student to gain the virtuoso level if they practiced the typical amount suggested by a piano teacher, which is 30 minutes a day. It would take 55 years. Not kidding! I did the math twice to be sure and then had my husband Michael do it, too. And then he did it 3 times.

This thought process sheds a new light on the Mozart phenomenon. He started practicing at age four. He practiced hours at a time, not because he had to, but because he wanted to. This is the magical part of the equation. A four year old wanted to practice the clavichord and the violin for hours at a time! So, he more than likely hit the virtuoso stage much younger than other musicians. And considering how young he died, I’m thrilled he dedicated his youth to practice, otherwise his brilliance may never have been realized.

-posted by Miss Allison, who knows that her students probably won’t reach virtuoso in the near future. But she’s willing to hand out chocolate to mark the beginning of the journey!”

Tags: instrument, kindermusik, Miss Allison, music

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Apr
13

Young Child: No Homework! Practice instead! Part 1 – The Chocolate Kisses

Posted in Young Child

Earns Hershey I feel I should explain why I offered your child chocolate kisses in exchange for practicing their glockenspiel. It’s kind of off the beaten track for me. I’ve never required that the kids do their homework, or fill out the work sheets. As a matter of fact, I still don’t really care if they do their homework. We go over that stuff in class. They learn to read music and count rhythms without doing their homework. They learn to associate a particular pitch, and pitch names and note placement on the staff without doing their homework. They learn everything they need from class except how to actually play the glockenspiel. That requires practice.

Practice and homework are two different things. Homework, in the musical world, is very often some kind of written work that reinforces or teaches the intellectual concepts and skills required to do a certain task. Practice is the physical act of doing a skill in order to gain proficiency. When I studied voice in college, my homework was the paper where I analyzed how the music related to the state of the character during the scene in the script. Another part of my homework was to learn the lyrics, the melody and the correct rhythm patterns, and then develop blocking and choreography that supported the character, the script, and the historical time period of the piece. I could do all these things without actually ever singing a note.

However, in order to actually perform the piece, even just in the classroom, I had to practice. I had to go through the physical act of signing the song, practicing supporting the notes and how to place them, and how to make the blocking and choreography work while singing the song. Sometimes for difficult pieces, I had to practice the song over and over again. Every minute on stage usually requires an hour of practice. Not homework, actual physical practice.

So, I don’t want your children to do their homework. But, practice can really help them to become better musicians. And, if they can learn the benefits of practice, they will be better students in general. After all, a rough draft is practice, and so is a string of math problems. The payoff to practice is, of course, skill improvement and takes a while for that to happen. A little chocolate sweetens the journey and gives the student something to accumulate while we wait for the mystery of practice to pay off.

It was really fun for me to hand out those kisses and to hear the radical improvement a couple of weeks of dedicated practice could buy. I was really shocked at how much better “Lucy Locket” and “Bell Horses” sounded. I loved hearing them sing “Mouse Mousie” on pitch while they played the F/C ostinato.

-posted by Miss Allison who’ll buy chocolate kisses by the thousands to hear the joy of success at the glockenspiel. She knows that this practice will lead her students to understand how to be successful at whatever they chose to do later in life.

Tags: instrument, kindermusik, Miss Allison, music

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Feb
20

Tales from Japan

Posted in Bits and Pieces, Our Time, Young Child

Konnichiwa (Hello)!
In all of our classes, we listen to music from all around the world. A stimulating musical environment enriches our activities, and provides fun and learning along the way! Several of our songs this semester come from Japan. My good friend Miss Nancy, who spent over 17 years in Japan, told me the tradition behind several of our songs.

Usagi from Fiddle Dee Dee
“Usagi” means “rabbit” in Japanese. The song refers to the legend born from the image of a rabbit looking at the moon. The legend of the “moon rabbit” is very old and many variants can be found in different countries of Asia. In Japan, the rabbit is pounding rice in a mortar to make “mochi,” or sticky rice cakes. The song asks, “Rabbit, rabbit, what are you looking at – why are you hopping away?” The response is that the rabbit is looking at the full harvest moon and bounding away.

Momotaro from Young Child Semester 4
Momotaro is a popular hero from Japanese folklore. Momotaro literally means “Peach Taro”. “Taro” was a commonly used boy’s name, which can be translated as “Peach Boy”.

As in many Japanese folk tales, Momotaro represents the ideal heroic strength of a youthful male. Momotaro miraculously appears to an old childless couple, “born” out of a peach that the old woman finds floating down the river. As the story continues, Momotaro sets out for Onigashima (“Demon’s Island”) to conquer the ogres living there. Along the way, he meets and befriends a monkey, a dog, and a pheasant. He carries a bag of millet dumplings from home. His new friends beg for a dumpling and in return, become members of his expedition. With their valiant teamwork, they defeat the ogres of Onigashima.

Arigato (thank you) and Sayonara (goodbye).

-posted by Miss Beth who enjoys looking for the rabbit in the moon on a clear evening!

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Feb
17

Resonator Bars

Posted in Child Development, Imagine That, Our Time, Young Child

chime-bars I’d like to take a minute to review why we use bars in our classroom. This may be new information for you or may have heard it before in the Fall. But that was a long time ago, and you may be wondering why we use this instrument with almost every single class. (In some age ranges, we DO use them every week!)

Getting On Pitch
Our bars are accurately pitched and help a child to develop good relative pitch, which is the ability to sing or hear pitch accurately despite not having perfect pitch. Perfect pitch is a gift very few people are born with. It can’t be learned. It is innate. So the rest of us get by (rather well, mostly) on the skill of relative pitch. The more a child is exposed to accurately pitched instruments in these formative yeas when their brains are developing so rapidly, the better their sense of pitch will be in later life.

Why an A and a D?
The range of the bars we use in class is a D above middle C to concert A. The concert A pitch is used to tune an orchestra. So, an accurate tonal memory for this pitch will benefit future orchestral participation. These pitches are the singing range of the young child. Between the ages of 2 and 4, most children will sing fairly accurately in this range.

Sing to Speak
Singing is closely linked to speech. A child who sings will often have a more varied speaking voice, use more spoken pitches in their speech patterns, have cleaner diction, and be more pleasant to listen to. Many speech pathologists use singing as a tool to teaching children with language delays to speak, and singing has been used for decades in the treatment of stuttering. Amazingly enough, a person who can’t speak well can very often, and quite easily, sing.

Which Hand is Your Hand?
Because the bars are a bi-lateral manipulative children are given the opportunity to experiment with using their hands in equal strength, without one or the other being dominant. This allows them to work through the delicate process of determining handedness. Most children are not definitively handed until they are between three and five.

My oldest child literally didn’t make the left or right decision until the last week before kindergarten started. He could change the pencil from his right to his left hand in the middle of a page and there was no difference in the quality of the work. Using bi-lateral manipulatives on a regular basis can help a child to use both hands in a non-stressful environment. Singing while we are doing this “work” makes the process joyful and fun.

Engineering 101
And just so you know, the bars are designed to be taken apart. For two and three year old children, engineering is just as valid as playing them. And there will always be at least one adult (your teacher) playing them in class, modeling bi- lateral playing and singing in their range, and hopefully some of you are playing, and singing, too. So don’t worry too much if they take them apart and build a train out of them. It’s all good.

Here are some songs that can be played on the bars: Twinkle Twinkle, The Alphabet Song, Ba Ba Black Sheep, Peas Porridge Hot, Sweetly Sings the Donkey, Oranges and Lemons, There’s a Little Wheel (a turnin’ in my heart), and lots of the songs on your Kindermusik CD’s.

If you’d like to purchase a pair of A and D resonator bars and mallets like the ones we use in class, please contact our Director, Analiisa, at analiisa@studio3music.com. We’ll give them to you at our cost, which is $40 plus tax. That may seem expensive, but remember, they are real instruments, individually tuned at the factory so they are accurately pitched. In the big picture, much less expensive than a Stradavarius, and way more developmentally appropriate for toddlers and preschoolers!

-posted by Miss Allison, who promises that there is no wrong way to play the bars!