Studio3Music Blog

Posts Tagged ‘listening’

Feb
19

Giddy up horsey… go, go, STOP!

Posted in Child Development, Music and the brain, Our Time, Things to do

We’ve been working on self-control in our Our Time classes. Can you do that with 2 year olds? Actually, yes! You can teach self-control, even to toddlers. Of course, the concept takes a while to master (I’ll be the first to admit I have limited self-control around Godiva sea salt dark chocolate, but I’m working on that.)

There are two parts to self-control. The first is inhibitory control, which is the ability to stop what you are doing and wait. (The other part is impulse control, which is the ability to stop an idea or thought from becoming an action.) But as inhibitory control develops first, we’ll begin there.

In class, we’ve been playing with a chant called Giddy Up Horsey. You can do this at home, too. Put your child on your lap on the floor, and say this chant and as you bounce:

Giddy up horsey, giddy up horsey, giddy up horsey, go, go, go! Bounce your child up and down.

Giddy, up horsey, giddy up horsey, giddy up horsey WHOA!! When you get to the whoa, stop bouncing, and lean back with your child and stop. Wait quietly for a moment. Keep repeating the whole thing until the giggles subside.

Then in class, we’ve been getting up and riding stick horses around to the same chant, stopping our ponies and waiting to be told to “go” again, (the inhibitory control part) after the whoa.

Miss Allison had an interesting observation this week. She said that because the grownups were in charge of the child’s body during the bounce, they were showing the children how to control their bodies (how to stop at the appropriate time). The grownups were teaching the children the pattern and the how of the going, stopping, and waiting.

When the children got up on the stick horses, they were more ready and able to control their own bodies. They were familiar with the pattern, and could anticipate the whoa. Miss Allison said that in classes that did the bounce first, before the pony riding, the children had a much higher success rate of demonstrating inhibitory control when in charge of their bodies during the pony ride, than the ones who just did the ride.

That fits with what we always say – You are your child’s first and best teacher.

So, do a little bouncing this week. And keep your eye on the blog. I’ve got an idea about how to make a really adorable stick pony to practice the riding and stopping and waiting (cleverly disguised inhibitory control practice). I just need to get the idea out of my head and take some pictures of the process. I promise – under $5 and NO sewing!

Oh, I almost forgot. For a fun stop and go game at home or in the car, check out this cute idea.

-posted by Miss Analiisa, who will practice some pony riding every time she’s having difficulty practicing either inhibitory or impulse control around that Godiva sea salt dark chocolate.

Tags: brain, kindermusik, language development, learning, listening, Miss Allison, Miss Analiisa, physical development, Things to do, toddlers

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Jan
6

When it comes to your child’s education, why music matters.

Posted in Child Development, Education, Music and the brain

I’m a Suzuki momma. I have a flute playing 7^th grader. And my 6 year old uses a glockenspiel in her Kindermusik Young Child class. To me, music is as important to children’s development as eating your vegetables. And your fish. And getting enough vitamin D. Oh, and washing your hair when you are a pre-adolescent and don’t take a shower voluntarily anymore.

In fact, as I write this, I am sitting here doing my best to force motivate my violin player through his practice. It’s not always easy. He’d rather be playing Xbox, or tug-a-war with his dog, or making up stories with his Halo Megabloks – anything but practicing. (Except, well, taking a shower and washing his hair, of course.)

But I know something he doesn’t. Finnish researchers (Did you know my maiden name was Koivisto? Maybe that’s one of the reasons why I like these scientists so much) have just developed a new method that shows the wide neural networks (including motor, emotions and creativity) that become activated all over the brain as music is listened to. Now scientists have an even better way to understand how music affects us.

Just like eating your vegetables and fish and getting enough vitamin D have a profound impact on my children’s physical health and development, regular music lessons/classes from an early age increases my children’s ability to learn. That’s a scientific fact, not just my opinion.

Here are a few examples of how scientists and researches believe music helps the brain:

Studies have shown that music lessons/classes assist the brain to process sounds more efficiently. This means that when your child is trying to stay focused on reading a history text in a noisy classroom, he or she will have an easier time concentrating than a non lesson taker.
Fast forward to a grown up job in one of those tiny cubicles. Multi-tasking and concentrating in a busy, loud office is an essential skill, one your violin player is much more likely to have.
One researcher has found that the silence between two musical notes triggers the brain cells and neurons, which are responsible for the development of sharp memory.
Other studies demonstrate that children who undergo musical training have a better verbal recall than those who have none. The amount of information that can be recalled increases the longer their period of musical training.
Learning a second language is mandatory for high school graduation. Musicians are much better than non musicians at discerning the subtleties in pitch in foreign languages. This is especially helpful for tonal languages, like Mandarin.
Coordination and concentration are also improved when a child takes instrument lessons. Think about what a flute player does all at the same time – moves both hands, reads music, listens to the players around him, watches the conductor – that’s a lot to coordinate!
We know that music stimulates the areas of the brain that are responsible for planning and analyzing, thereby improving your organizational skills and making you more capable of handling math, reasoning and other cognitive tasks.
And I think most importantly, when a child masters a piece of music or a difficult technique, it provides a sense of accomplishment, and gives a boost in confidence that spills over into all areas of life and produces a desire to tackle more challenges.

I want my children to grow up and have a good work ethic, an eagerness to try new things, the ability to reason and think, and the confidence that they can successfully navigate life. The music they participate in now will help them accomplish just that.

-posted by Miss Analiisa, who is going to make salmon burgers tomorrow night for dinner. After she wrestles her violin-playing 9 year old into the shower in the morning.

Tags: brain, kindermusik, language development, learning, listening, Miss Analiisa, music, physical development

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Dec
25

Listening to the Music Inside

Posted in Music and the brain

As a little girl, my first musical memory was singing “I’m a Little Teapot” for my family. A lot. I either sang it really well, or was just incredibly cute doing it- I prefer to think I was both.

Can’t you just hear that song in your head right now? I also remember sitting next to our stereo speaker, asking my dad over and over to replay “The Chipmunk Song” (Christmas Don’t Be Late). Now, if you were a kid in America in 1958, (see picture of my older brother and me), the previous sentence should immediately trigger your memory to play that silly melody.

What song does this snowy picture immediately remind you of? Yes, “Frosty the Snowman!” Did you brain “play” it for you when you thought of it?

This silent, “inner hearing”, or audiation, is the ability to “hear” music when no musical sound is present. When you audiate, you have internalized and are “thinking” music. For example, have you ever found yourself with a song “going through your head?” You’re audiating! Being able to hear music in this way is an important part of musical literacy, just as being able to think thoughts without speaking them aloud is an important in language and thought development.

Dr. Edwin Gordon defined audiation as “the hearing and comprehending of sound that is not physically present.” According to Gordon, “audiation is to music as thinking is to language.” Just as children babble before speaking and thinking in language, they also progress through steps in music before they fluently speak and think in music.

Tips for parents: This is a fun game to play with in the car, in the kitchen, or while cuddling on a lazy Saturday morning when the children pile in bed with you. Start singing a favorite song, and then stop before you sing the last note of a phrase or the end of the song. Wait and see if your child sings it for you. If he does, he is successfully “thinking music,” or hearing it in his head. – Theresa Case

What I think is really cool, (being a music geek), is all the ways we can use this “inner hearing” in our everyday lives. When someone asks you, “what is the 10^th letter of the alphabet?” your mind automatically plays the ABC song to help you find the letter “J.” When faced with a word we do not recognize, we “sound out” the syllables in our heads to try to figure it out. (Like the word, “audiation”)! We use familiar melodies to help children with everyday tasks when we sing, “toys away, toys away,” or “this is the way we brush our teeth.”

In Kindermusik classes, we practice “hearing the music inside” in many different ways: Asking children what a bear or a train sounds like before playing the sound clip for them, leaving out successive words in “Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes,” or the letters B-I-N-G-O in you-know-what song. We take familiar melodies and change the words to suit the situation, as in “Got a Rock in my Pocket.” We then use this song as a humming activity. Humming is another way of “hearing the music inside,” as we usually think of the words of a song while making humming the notes. We expose children to many types of music to provide them with a broad and varied musical vocabulary on which to build their future musical experiences.

And remember, when we share all these musical experiences together in class, whether playing drums to “African Noel,” dancing to “The Sugar Plum Fairy,” or rocking to Greensleeves, we are sharing all of our collected memories and feelings about that music with all the other children and grownups in class. We all bring to each activity our own life experiences and are allowed to share in the joy of the moment with others, in addition to creating new ones for our children.

One more picture for you, so I’ll know what classic song is playing as your part of “listening to the music inside.”

-posted by Miss Judy, who constantly gets music “stuck” inside of her head, and loves it!

Tags: brain, kindermusik, learning, listening, Miss Judy, music

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Nov
6

synCOpaTION – Tickling the Brain

Posted in Child Development, Music and the brain, Village

Syncopation means an unexpected change in an established rhythm or beat. In simple terms – syncopation means that the weak beat gets the accent or emphasis. You’ll often hear syncopation in African or Latin music, or jazz.

Take a standard American march like Stars and Stripes. A march has a steady, predictable beat. If you were to clap along, you would automatically clap on beats 1 and 3(unless you were the tuba player – who has the syncopation on beats 2 and 4).

Our brains love steady beats, because the brain loves to find patterns and sequences. In fact, if you listen to music that has a steady, predictable beat (like that march I mentioned), after a while, your neurons actually begin firing at the same rate as the beat of the march.

But as humans, we like patterns only up to a point. After that comes boredom, and we stop paying attention. But when the pattern changes, we begin paying attention again. Syncopation tickles our brains, so to speak. Our brains search for the new pattern, and the sense of unpredictability that comes with change is fun and interesting to both your brain and your soul.

Think about it – when you hear syncopated African or Latin music or Jazz – it makes you want to smile and move, right? The beat is unexpected and interesting. Take a listen to Leroy Anderson’s “The Syncopated Clock”. In Village class, we’ve been listening to the jazzy Hop to It. That’s syncopated, too.

But what does this have to do with your little one? Let me explain. You want your child to eat a wide variety of foods, to like an assortment of flavors, textures, colors and shapes. Even if they ask for the steady, predictable mac-n-cheese and chicken nuggets every night, you still want them to have a balanced diet.

The same is true for music. Our children need a variety of musical experiences. Life is richer and more interesting with a varied diet of music. And some brain tickling.

-posted by Miss Analiisa, who has been feeling rather bored the last couple of days, and feels in need of a brain tickle in the form a new project of some sort.

Tags: brain, kindermusik, listening, Miss Analiisa, music

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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.