If you’ve ever come to a Kindermusik class, you’ll notice that we will have a steady beat activity every week, in every age group. It might involve shakers, streamers, or drums. Or singing, chanting or lap bouncing. Or maybe moving our bodies or dancing. Or even stomping, gliding or tiptoeing.

A baby hears a constant steady beat (mom’s heartbeat!) by 22 weeks after conception. And every infant is born with the ability to keep a steady beat – his own internal beat.  Sometimes in a Village class, a piece of music will match a baby’s own beat, and you’ll see him or her banging away in perfect rhythm!

Steady beat for babies:
Exposure to steady beat (hearing it, feeling it, “seeing it”, being moved to it) is important for a baby’s developing sense of steady beat. An internalized awareness of beat will help him to coordinate his movements.

A baby who is beginning to internalize a steady beat will show it through rocking, nodding, patting and kicking. Later she’ll be able to demonstrate steady beat through clapping and playing a drum to a steady beat.  Steady beat will be a key factor in his learning to walk.

Steady beat for toddlers:
Children 18 months through 3 years old are learning to control and coordinate their body’s movements. The ability to keep a steady beat helps in walking with a smooth gait, leading to running and jumping with confidence.

It is at this age that feeling and moving to a steady beat develops the ability to organize and coordinate movements with proper timing – like bouncing a ball and catching it.

Steady beat for preschoolers:
Steady beat competency is central to the development of movement organization, such a marching in time, dribbling and shooting a basketball, using scissors and writing smoothly. Being able to move their entire body to a steady beat leads to the ability to speak and read with a smooth cadence, thereby enhancing communication abilities.

Interesting steady beat facts:
A sample study was done of first and second string NFL players.  100% of the first string players could maintain a steady beat without any external stimulus for 45 seconds.  Only 50% of the second string players could accomplish the same.

Tests show that children with steady beat internalization are better readers and more successful in math. Children with better abilities in steady beat are reported to be better behaved in class and have less aggressive physical contact with other students.

It is well-known that a stutter does not stutter when singing or using a steady beat while speaking. A stuttering student figured out her own solution: when she wanted to answer a question, she tapped a steady beat on her leg before speaking. This allowed her to answer without stuttering.

As the result of a study done in 2002 by University College in London, scientists believe that a poor sense of rhythm could be the cause of dyslexia. “Researchers concluded that an awareness of beats can influence the way young children assimilate speech patterns, which may in turn affect their reading and writing abilities.”

Steady beat helps children to understand and organize their world. So if you are going to run with scissors, make sure you’ve got a good sense of steady beat. You’ll run more coordinated and smoothly, and thereby be a little bit safer.

-posted by Miss Analiisa, whose mother reported that at 2 weeks old, Analiisa consistently rocked in time to a piece of classical music that had been often played while she was in utero. But sadly, she was a horrible basketball player.

I don’t know why kids love to go fast.  I just know they do.  To get there, they have to crawl, pull up and then cruise. Then they toddle and waddle and walk, but I am convinced that walking is not the final goal. The end product is running. 

By the time they are 2 or 3 all they do is run.  And they are fast.  I watched the sidewalk begin to melt under the sneakers of a little guy who was running away from his mom today.  Let’s face it – they are quicker than we are, and the very act of running brings them joy.

However, running leads to accidents – heads bonked on counters and corners and knees crashed into furniture and the occasional head over heels tumble.  And let’s not underestimate the emergency room potential of two children crashing into each other while on a hypersonic mission to wear holes in the carpet. 

They have to run to be happy, but running is not safe. How do we adults (who keep these precious little people safe and happy) reconcile this dichotomy?

I gave up preventing running a long time ago in the Imagine That classroom.  Running (and going fast in general) is just too important to the children. And from a musical perspective, fast is just as valid a tempo setting as slow.  But I do have to have a way to make the running activities in class safe and integrated into the curriculum.

So yes, we run – quite a bit.  But we ALL run together and we have to ALL go the same direction around the circle.  If you are a watcher during running time you have to sit out of the running circle, so that you don’t get mowed down.  I work running into the plot by using it as a means of transportation. 

We are always going somewhere in Imagine That, and if we are going to walk, we may as well run.  And sometimes there are scary or yucky things to run away from (A dinosaur store sent us scurrying today, and an underwear store sent everyone dashing across the room last week.) 

There are other ways to go fast.  We go fast with Hot Wheel cars,  and play fast with our instruments, and we do finger plays at the speed of light. We can row a boat so fast you can barely see the oars (Well, it’s hard to see an invisible, imaginary oar anyway- but our arms are going so fast you can barely see them!)  

When we play a steady beat I make a point to emphasize both the regular beat and the double beat, so that we can go fast.  Sometimes a song allows us to even access the triple beat, and that is really, really fast. It is such joy to shake a tambourine at a breakneck pace. 

The only thing better than going fast is the ability to control that speed - to stop your flying feet on a dime and to freeze your tambourine like solid ice in an arctic blizzard.  To stop as fast and as hard as the running that necessitated the stop in the first place.  So we work on running and stopping, on driving our cars presto down the Imagine That highway and stopping them cold when the light turns red. 

Early Childhood Experts call this inhibitory control.  I call it pre-school personal power.  When the child can stop an action once it has begun (in other words, come to a squealing halt before they set the floor on fire with their speedy feet), they are showing that they have learned inhibitory control.  Next comes impulse control, which is the ability to prevent a thought form becoming an action.  Oh, yes, it’s years and years away, but it is coming…..

-posted by Miss Allison, who has worn out a large number of shoes running with her preschoolers over the years…

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.

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?

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.

Addison stopping to smell the flowers!

It seems I’m always struggling against the rush…the rush to get out the door in the morning, the rush to get to the next appointment, the rush to get through dinner and baths and bedtime. And with my second child, Addison, who always wants to be just like her older sister, there is now the added rush to grow up. It’s easy to get caught in the rush and forget to stop and smell the roses.

After reflecting on our ever-present urge to hurry, I have realized that one of the few remaining islands of unhurried calm in our lives is our participation in Kindermusik…well, if you don’t count the rush to get there on time. With Kindermusik, I’ve never felt pressure to rush from one level to the next. And as Addison got closer and closer to moving on to Imagine That, her first drop-off class, I found myself wanting to stretch it out as long as possible, knowing my time as a parent participant would soon end.

Our older daughter, Jaeden, warms very slowly to new situations. For her, we saw great benefit in giving her the time to experience each level fully before moving on. But, even with Addison, who needs much less time to adjust to new situations, the extra time we stayed in Our Time before moving up to Imagine That was well worth it.

When she started Our Time as an 18-month-old, she watched and listened attentively. As a two-year-old, she cautiously participated, gradually expanding her skills and sense of adventure. But, as a three-and-a-half-year-old, not only could she comfortably do everything, she experienced the responsibility of being a leader. Waiting those extra few months before switching classes solidified her confidence and gave her the ability to participate more fully.

Today, on our way to class, Addison said to me, “I don’t have to be scared to go to my drop-off class. I’m a big girl and I know my teacher. It’s Miss Allison.” Then she hugged me at class, said goodbye, and sat herself down in the circle. I’m glad we waited, even when she towered over all of the other kids in her Our Time class and had been asking to move on. There is comfort for me, as a parent, in knowing that she is truly ready, truly happy, and truly willing to take her next step. So even in all the rush, I am grateful that we remembered to stop and smell the roses just a little longer with Kindermusik. We hope this inspires you to enjoy the roses in your own life and to let go of some of the rush.

- posted by Erika M. Kapur, whose oldest daughter is wishing there was more time to enjoy the roses and this wasn’t her last year of Kindermusik.