What to do when class is over.

Here is my first blog all about At Home Materials for Our Time. I will post another one to finish up next week! Today I want to focus on the Home Activity booklet.

Kindermusik is NOT intended to be just 45 minutes of fun once a week (though it is fun!) Kindermusik is all about what happens at home, as well as in class. In order to assist you, the parents and caregivers of the children enrolled, Kindermusik International provides you with the tools you need to continue the classroom experience at home.

Your primary resource is your Home Activity Book. I can already see you experienced Kindermusik grown-ups shaking your heads and saying, “Oh, no Miss Allison, our CD is the primary resource for play at home.” But I really mean it – the Activity Book is the base for turning your 45 minutes of class fun into a week-long foray into the world of learning through music.

Without the book, you can only re-create what we have done in class. The book provides you with tools and ideas for extending what we have done in class, and adapting the activities to suit your child at home.

So… pull out your Home Activity Book, and turn to page 8. At the bottom, you’ll find a little graph that has 6 icons. Kindermusik has taken the six areas of brain development – physical, cognitive, emotional, language, social and emotional – and given each one an icon so you can quickly identify them throughout the book.

Throughout the book, you will find little tidbits of information (we call them Foundation of Learning Statements, or FOLS for short), about different areas of development. The FOLS also tell you how the activities you are learning in class, or choosing from the book to do at home meet your child’s developmental needs.

Now, you can’t decide to just stay at home and do Kindermusik, and not come to class! The FOLS you will hear in class are not likely to be in the book, and vice versa. The combination of At Home Materials and class provide the optimum well-rounded experience.

In the book, you will also find all the words the songs, all the notated melody lines, and the words and directions for the finger plays and chants. Please don’t hesitate to make up your own words to the songs. This is an age-old tradition called piggy-backing. Did you know there are over 500 verses for Yankee Doodle, and over 100 of them are about George Washington? So be creative and make up some new verses to the songs. It might just get you in the history books!

The core of the Home Activity Book is the activities. (No surprise there!) There are games, activities and crafts, and extensions of activities we do in class that are intended to be done at home. A great activity is “Washing Up”, on page 16. For the older child, add a second tub, and have them “wash” in the tub on the left, and “rinse” in the tub on the left. This way they are moving objects in the same direction as we read – left to right. These kinds of activities prepare them for the cross page linear adventure (reading) their eye muscles will soon be undertaking.

Younger children, of course, will just want to play in the tub of water. Perfectly appropriate! Do this on a day when you have to mop the floor anyway, and you will be all set for an adventure with water outside of the bathtub. Loving anything do with getting wet, my kids were excellent with a mop by the time they were 4 or 5 (they started practicing way before that).

Next week I’ll have suggestions about the books and CD’s. But in the meantime, enjoy your CD’s, and crack open that Home Activity Book and play with your children!

Kiss your children for me!

-posted by Miss Allison, who thinks that if you are NOT in one of her classes, you should kiss your child from Miss Beth, Miss Stacey, Miss Anna, Miss Katie, Miss Nancy, Teacher Aaron, Miss Anita, Miss Steph or Miss Colleen!