Studio3Music Blog

Posts Tagged ‘brain’

Oct
7

Brain Rules: We Don’t Pay Attention to Boring Things!

One infamous evening, our family was gathered around the dinner table. That day, I had taught a home school lesson on Johnny Appleseed. I told how he walked barefoot across the Midwest, planting apple trees and giving seeds to settlers. We watched the Disney cartoon of Johnny’s life. We made an apple craft. We baked apple turnovers and ate them. That evening at dinner, I proudly asked my 2^nd grader to tell her dad about what we had studied that day. She paused. “Uh, I don’t know,” she replied, rather bored. “I think we learned about Jerry somebody.”

Obviously I failed to grab my daughter’s attention that day. What could I have done to stimulate her learning? That is the subject of Brain Rule #4 from John Medina’s science-made-understandable book, Brain Rules. He explains the simple concept that better attention equals better learning.

So how does the brain pay attention? The normal, daily function of the brain is called “Intrinsic Alertness,” according to theorist Michael Posner, whose research Medina quotes. The brain is looking around, taking in the environment, noting anything unusual. When something out of the ordinary is detected, the “Orienting Network” of the brain takes over causing it to absorb the new information. We respond to what is unusual by looking, listening or perhaps moving to get more information. Next the “Executive Network” of the brain causes us to decide how to react. We jump, scream, talk, or maybe do nothing.

When I began to teach my daughter’s class on Johnny Appleseed that day, her brain was in “Intrinsic Alertness.” She saw her friends, a teacher, paper, pencils, a map, craft supplies—the normal Tuesday school routine. What was missing was a stimulus to arouse her attention. None of the activities caused her to take in the new information. However, imagine if I’d arranged for a large barefoot man wearing a pot on his head to unexpectedly saunter into the classroom and hand out apple seeds. Her “Orienting Network” would have fired up to process this new information. I doubt she’d have called him “Jerry somebody” after that!

The brain attends to emotions. Medina teaches us that we remember events that are tied to emotions much more vividly and for a longer time than neutral events. While my daughter had fun doing the activities that day, she obviously didn’t give a rip. Medina explains that when the brain detects an “emotionally charged event,” a chemical called dopamine is released into the system. Dopamine is essential in memory and information processing. Imagine the effect if Johnny Appleseed had walked in the door! The chemical release would have created a lasting impression. As it was, the information she heard was no more memorable than the garbage truck rumbling by on its daily route. Her attention was never aroused.

In Brain Rule #4, John Medina teaches us how to understand the brain’s capacity to pay attention and not pay attention. As a parent and teacher, I’ve learned a lot that I will use in my own learning as well as teaching my kids. Truth is, neither of us pay much attention to boring things!

-posted by Donna Detweiler, whose “Orienting Network” was evidently never activated in Geology 101—zzzzzzz.

Tags: brain, Donna Detweiler, learning

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Sep
30

Brain Rules: Exercise Matters!

Posted in Bits and Pieces, Things to do

I’ve recently been absorbing a surprisingly interesting book on brain development. My beloved teaching coach recommended this book to me after listening to my frustrations with teaching my 10-year-old daughter, whose current dislike for school was baffling me. My goal was to engage her lively brain in a meaningful education experience. I needed help.

John Medina’s book, Brain Rules, to the rescue. Medina has an impressive and somewhat unusual resume for such a reader-friendly book. He is a developmental molecular biologist and research consultant. He is the director of the Brain Center for applied learning Research at Seattle Pacific University. He also teaches at the University of Washington School of Medicine, in its Department of Bioengineering. He is also a dad. Perhaps that is what makes his material feel like you’re chatting with someone who knows. He’s one of us.

I’ve decided to devote my next few blogs to giving you a taste of Brain Rules. I’m sure you’ll find Medina’s research interesting and helpful. I’d better let you know he’s an avid evolutionist. (I realize this topic can be a hot button.) Whether that is the camp you’re in or not, there’s a ton of good stuff to be gleaned from his “12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School,” the subtitle of the book.

Brain Rule # 1: The Brain Loves Exercise!

If this chapter doesn’t get you off the couch, there’s no hope for you. The relationship between exercise and mental alertness is incontrovertible. Medina tells us about his observations of two 83-year-old men, Frank Lloyd Wright and Jim. They shared the same number of years on the planet, but Jim was finishing life at a nursing home, staring into space, while Frank was doing television interviews with a wisdom, wit and vigor that would challenge a 30-year-old. While the details leading to Jim’s end-of-life frailty were not known, the fact is that researchers do know what can be done to increase the odds for aging with virility. Yep, it’s exercise.

While Medina deftly explains interesting details about the fascinating complexities of brain chemistry, the bottom line is exercise increases cardio-fitness, which significantly lowers risk for heart attacks and stroke. Simply put, through exercise, more blood is pumped to the brain which equals more brain health and strength. Exercise increases long term memory, reasoning, ability to focus, problem solving, and abstract thinking. Exercise increases production of chemicals in the brain that produce feelings of well-being and decrease stress. Bottom Line: Exercise—All Good!

Medina wanted to know if “couch potatoes” who began to exercise would see positive results. Exercise proved to increase their mental capacities unquestionably. He quotes Dr. Annette Yancey’s research on the effect of exercise on children. She discovered, “Kids pay better attention to their subjects and are less likely to be disruptive in terms of their classroom behavior when they’ve been active. Kids feel better about themselves, have higher self-esteem, less depression, less anxiety. All of those things can impair academic performance and attentiveness.” Whether younger or older, started sooner or later, exercise improved function.

The best part of the chapter on exercise is that it doesn’t take much to make the brain happier! Medina reports that research shows 20-30 minutes of aerobic activity 2-3 times a week gives significant results. He proposes treadmills in all offices and at least two recesses per day for school children. He figured out how to mount his laptop on his treadmill and reports that it took him 15 minutes to learn to type emails while walking 1.8 miles per hour.

I’m working at increasing the level of exercise in our lives and home school. My morning routine increasingly includes a 20-30 minute walk/run. Our learning environment is becoming more active. As I teach, I have my daughter interact with me and write on the white board. I give her recess as needed. I’m seeing improvement in her attitude and mine.

Next time—Brain Rule #4—We Don’t Pay Attention to Boring Things!

-posted by Donna Detweiler, who recommends you visit www.brainrules.net or buy the book for more detailed treatment of this topic.

Image: Andy Newson / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Tags: books, brain, Donna Detweiler, learning

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Sep
25

Big Fish, Little Fish

Posted in Child Development, Music and the brain, Our Time

You’ll very often hear your teacher talk about vocal development in class, and you might wonder what exactly we are referring to…. Are we talking about your child’s ability to sing or speak, or to acquire language?

Are we talking about the minute machinations we all do with our lips, teeth, tongue, and our hard and soft palettes to form phonemes?

Or do we mean the inflections in spoken language that tell a listener we are asking a question or telling a joke?

YES! Vocal development is all of these things.

I have dozens of activities I love to do in class to nurture vocal development, but I’m going to limit myself to just one today.

It’s the little ditty Above the Sea, aka “the song with the bathtub fish”. I love those fish because they open the door to world of vocal development for your child in a tangible and engaging way?

What makes this song and fish so special?

It’s a story song. Songs that tell stories engage children in a deeper way by growing and developing and changing. They have characters to connect with, so the child’s emotions are brought into play. This gives us a song the child is more interested in participating with.

Above the Sea has a conversation, and the song’s melodic pattern also mimics that conversation. When we ask a question, our pitch will naturally slide up at the end of the sentence. When Little Fish asks “What’s above the sea?”, the pitch moves up as well. So, when we sing this story we are helping our child to understand how people use language to communicate with each other.

Above the Sea also develops your child’s ability to produce spoken words. Singing is often easier for a child than speaking, because singing is slower and more deliberate. Syllables are broken down and clearly pronounced when you sing; consonants are enunciated and vowels are drawn out.

What will often times pass by in a blur in spoken word will be clearly heard and understood when sung. Now they can use those words in other parts of their life, and they can sing along with the song, too.

Each of the sung patterns has visual components to accompany them. The fish face each other when they talk, and I always wiggle the fish who is talking at that moment. When they go up to the top of the sea, we all swim our fish up and sing up a scale at the same time -nice little auditory/visual connection there!

When the fish come back down, our voices descend the scale, too. The kids can clearly see/hear/feel the patterns in the song. The more senses we include in the learning process the deeper the learning is!

My favorite part is the verse in the middle whose words we can change. Does your child love sharks? See the shark- hear him bark, his teeth are so scary!

Dinosaurs? See the dinosaur – and hear her roar, I think her name’s Marie!

What about Lightening McQueen? See Lightening McQueen – hear his engine scream, He’ll win the Grand Prix!

Come to class and sing me your verses. I’d love to hear them!

So go ahead – sing a fishy song with your child today to encourage their vocal development. By all means, play with your words! They are the best and cheapest toys our children will ever have. And, unlike plastic sharks and dinosaurs and Lightening McQueen cars, they will last the longest.

-posted by Miss Allison, who adores words, spoken, sung and written.

Tags: brain, kindermusik, language development, listening, Miss Allison, music, preschoolers, singing

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Sep
11

Naps for 7th graders. Do they make rest cots that size?

Posted in Child Development, Education

I am the mother of a 12 ½ year old son (the half being important enough to him that I mention it to you). He is a homeschooler, which means that for the most part, (Latin, band, and geology aside) I am his teacher as well.

Like many other adolescents, he wears his headphones so much I am afraid that his earbuds may one day become permanently attached to his ears. In order to complete his schoolwork, he insists it is necessary to work in a multi-media environment – watching TV while working on a computer (not related to the homework subject), all while listening to an audiobook on his mp3 player. Seriously?

This year I frequently find him napping in the afternoons, or on his breaks in between subjects. I know teens need lots of sleep as they are growing so much, but if this keeps up, I swear he’s going to be 7 feet tall! How much will that cost me in groceries?

And then I came across an article that made me consider that maybe (just maybe) his brain knows what it is doing.

Ron David, chair of the Scripps Florida Research Department of Neuroscience explains that this generation has grown up with huge amounts of information vying for their attention. (Think texting, video games, listening to music, watching TV and doing homework all at the same time.)

Davis says, “They have adapted to it. Their brains are probably wired differently from their parents. So it may well be that today’s teens and twenty-somethings need to have a multi-sensory experience to learn well.” So not what I wanted to hear. But, just because my forty-something brain can’t handle all that input at once, it doesn’t mean his can’t. The test, of course, is can he complete his schoolwork accurately and in the appropriate amount of time? If not, the multi-media show gets turned off.

Now, on to the need to nap. During school, and after school. And as late as possible in the mornings. I know that during these years that the need for sleep increases, and often teens body clocks switch to night-owl mode. But the napping?

The other interesting thing Davis spoke about in the article was called “spaced conditioning”, which is the fact that when learning is spaced out with rest periods in-between, we remember the information for far longer than if we receive all that knowledge in a single episode of learning.

“No one really knows why it’s important to long term memory formation”, says Davis, “but there appears to be something magical about rest periods during learning.”

What does this teach me? That my junior higher needs recess just as much as my 4^th grader and kindergartner. Even if recess + preteen = nap.

-posted by Miss Analiisa, mother to one almost teenage Nathan, who wants him to know that just because he’s going to read this blog, does not give him the right to tell me that “his brain knows best” whenever he feels like it. Despite what you may think, it doesn’t, and I’m still your mother!

Tags: brain, learning, Miss Analiisa

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Sep
4

More Music, Please!

Posted in Family, Things to do

At Kindermusik, we believe music is as good for kids as Gummi-Vites and as yummy as birthday cake and ice cream! Ever heard you kids complain about having to listen to music? Maybe opera isn’t their favorite, but most kids consume music like fishy crackers. More, please!

So the goal today is to get us thinking about how to up our kids’ consumption of good music on a daily basis. Note: I’m not talking about adding Musak to life but asking how can we thoughtfully include music in our children’s lives which will enrich their lives and, as research shows, their brain development.

Here are a few ideas to get us thinking about how to tune in to more music throughout a typical day.

Morning: How about teaching our kids to start their day with music? If our children don’t already have their own music machine, it’s never too early. Little hands love to make music happen all by themselves. For toddlers, a cassette player or a low end CD player is perfect. Fisher Price makes a classic cassette player that can even survive a bouncing solo trip down a flight of stairs. We know. At a favorite thrift store we can find old music machines that are perfect for children to use without parental oversight. When they break, we’re usually out less that $10!

V-Tech and Fisher Price make varieties of button pushing, music making balls, caterpillars, keyboards etc. It’s wise to look for musical toys that have tunes that we like too: Some have classical fare. Others a variety of classic folk tunes. Most of us avoid the toys with repetitive ditties that stick annoyingly in our heads for days to come.

For morning listening, an accessible basket or book shelf can contain a selection of music they can pop in first thing. We have picked these out together at the library, music store or from the family collection. Depending on our families’ taste and tolerance for morning noise, we can choose Kindermusik CDs, wake up music like John Phillips Souza marches, mellow or peppy praise songs, or story songs. The choices are endless. The point is to make the choices versus letting the radio DJ’s choose; though that’s not bad if we have a station that chooses the songs we love.

Older kids may have an IPod which can be loaded with selections, however because listening with ear buds cuts our child off from the family community, I wouldn’t encourage the habit of using them unless travelling or in a situation where individualized entertainment is happening. An IPod docking station with good speakers works great for sharing music as a family.

Mid-morning Snack/Music breaks: Consider adding a music selection to snack time as a part of the routine for preschoolers. They love to listen together or with a parent, and will likely clap or sing along. Having musical instruments of their own available increases the fun.

Lunch time: We are more likely to sit with our preschoolers at lunch time, so it can be an opportunity to share music that we love. We can chat about the kind of songs, the instruments, musical patterns, or simply tell the story of why we love them. Choosing new music from the library can make a fun, listening memory with our kids. Do we like the new CD or not? Why? Can we hear the tuba, or the piccolo? Can we hear a repeated line of music? Does it make us want to march, dance, cry or take a rest?

Afternoon rest time: Surprisingly, I vividly recall my own preschool nap time with affection. My teacher would play Disney recordings as we lay quietly on our mats. Cinderella was my favorite. Today there are so many delightful story/song recordings available. Now that I have school age children, listening to radio drama has often been a highlight of our homeschool day.

Dinner time: When my son was newborn, my husband would come home from work, put on a CD and recline in the chair with our son on his chest. They enjoyed hours of music together in this manner. By the time our boy was a toddler, he would flap and wave his arms gleefully when one of their favorite CDs was played. Those two share a close relationship. I suspect the shared music helped create their bond. Listening to music as a family at dinner time can create lifelong memories for kids. The winding down time right before or after dinner is also a good time listening to story or music recordings.

Bedtime: Bedtime routine lends itself naturally to music. Many kids like to fall asleep to a beloved lullaby CD. The calming effect of music is legendary. From Brahms lullabies to Jim Brickman piano solos, the options are endless. The challenge is to try some new ones now and then. Kids can fall in love with more than one bedtime CD.

Kids can never get enough of the sweet stuff of life, which includes music. So, how about giving them some more…please.

-posted by Donna Detweiler, whose musical taste is quite varied, but she has a sweet spot of bluegrass.