Studio3Music Blog

Posts Tagged ‘Miss Allison’

Mar
21

Understanding Your Child (Boring title, important idea.)

Posted in Child Development, Education, Family, parenting

I’ll be right up front and tell you that tell you that I don’t pretend to understand your children. Seriously, I have three of my own. All complete opposites. I have enough to do, thank you very much, without worrying about your kids.

Don’t believe that? Okay. Truth be told – I’m a teacher through and through. I strive to appreciate every child I work with, and if you ask me about your child, (as some of you have), I’m happy to give you my observations. I really do want you help you be successful in the art of parenting.

I can also share what I’ve learned about how to really get to know them. And why would you want to get to know them? Besides the obvious fact that you like your children, of course! Your children are born with unique personalities, skills, gifts, talents, learning styles, and characteristics. It’s our job as parents to support our children as they mature.

Understanding your child will assist you to guiding them as they grow. For instance, knowing your child’s learning style (In order to understand concepts, do they need to see it, hear it, or do it?) will tell you how to help them with learning to read, tell time, or grasp their addition facts.

Children arrive with some prewiring. I don’t mean that they can’t change and grow, but they aren’t blank slates, either. How my 3 children behaved in utero was how they acted after they arrived on the outside. One was a poker – he’s 13 and he still “pokes” at me verbally if he wants my attention. One was a roller – I looked like a pregnant Sigourney Weaver from the movie Alien. He still is a whole body mover. He needs to move to learn. He moves when things get emotionally difficult to deal with. He rolls on the floor a few times in the middle of a particularly intense violin lesson, and then gets up and is ready to work again. My two boys will always be pokers and rollers.

The best way to understand your children is to simply observe them. Playing, working, sleeping, eating. What are the character traits that continually show themselves? Are they introverted or extroverted? What are their favorite activities? Those things are your child’s “normal”. Most of the time, your child’s “normal” is perfectly okay. And you need to be okay with it, too.

You don’t like going to the zoo every weekend, but your daughter begs, rain or shine? Think about what clues that gives you. Nurture that love of nature. If you don’t want to go to the zoo again, find new museums, take a field trip to the vet’s office, check out library books about reptiles for your visual learner. Get a pet for your “doer” to take care of.

Want to get to know someone? Ask a lot of questions! So, ask your child open-ended questions. (Those questions that require more than a yes or no answer.) Instead of asking your child who they played with in school, ask them what they played.

Miss Allison (a great observer of children) gave me some more ideas to pass along to you:

When you read a book to them ask them what their favorite part was… who their favorite character was…

Have a verbal child tell you a story. You’ll discover a lot about what they think about, and feel, are scared of… wishing for…

Watch how they play with small pretend play manipulatives: people toys (like action figures and Polly Pocket type things) and anthropomorphized animal toys, too, plastic animals or dinosaurs, small stuffed animals. Large motor pretend play is usually done with other children, but small motor pretend play is often done alone, so you only see what your child is interested in rather than what they are willing to compromise on.

Pay attention to the skill sets that confuse them or make them frustrated. Those activities are pointing you toward the areas the child isn’t as comfortable with, may be stuck with, or toward personality traits such as perfectionist, or short tempered.

Make a point of playing with your child in different areas of development. Do a puzzle one day, take a nature hike the next. Ride bikes, or work on pedaling, build with blocks, color and do a craft, sing a song, tell a story so that you can see where your child is gifted, where they struggle and most importantly, where they are growing and where they are not growing.

With lots of observation and interaction, you’ll have the knowledge of what tools and toys to provide, to assist them in reaching their next level of maturity.

-posted by Miss Analiisa, who sees so many of her sister’s and mother’s traits in her daughter that it’s more than a bit freaky.

Image: Naypong / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Tags: brain, learning, listening, Miss Allison, Miss Analiisa, parenting, physical development

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Mar
3

The Lone Ranger and Capering Cupids

Posted in Bits and Pieces, Education, Symphony Concerts

I have a go to list for music when I’m feeling less than myself. I mentioned in my last post that I enjoy the less than meaningful music of the 80’s for rote work around the house, and that I find certain music to be irritating and other music to be sad. If you’ve been to the symphony for one of our concerts recently you’ve heard some of my favorite classical music.

At our Christmas concert in December we sang the “Hallelujah Chorus”. I’ve always loved the Hallelujah Chorus. The best part of my Birthday this year was getting up at 5:30 am to make it to Choir rehearsal with the high-school students who joined us at the concert. I sang the “Hallelujah Chorus” three times before 7:30 am… oh, bliss….

And in January we focused a whole show on Mozart. There are scads of Mozart pieces on my Happy List. I love Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, I love the Piano Sonata in C Major, I love the Haffner Symphony and the Piano Concerto No. 22, and there are so many things on my LOVE IT Mozart list that I can’t even remember the names of some of them.

On March 17th, at our Symphony Serenade concert, we will be putting the spotlight on another one of my favorite pieces of music (and one that is definitely on my Happy List), Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony.

I love the playful nature of this piece, and I can’t ever quite get the vision of Fantasia’s capering cupids, centaurs and Pegasus out of my mind when I hear it. I did manage to quash them down low enough to write a story without any fantastical mythical creatures. However, it does have animals, and they do talk, so perhaps I haven’t escaped the fantastical after all.

You’ll also be hearing part of the Overture for William Tell (yes, the famous part), the theme from the Lone Ranger. There is nothing quite like hearing that brass fanfare and watching the faces of the children light up as they realize something wonderful is coming. That fanfare creates a sense of excitement; it stirs something deep within us. It literally screams, “Heroic deeds are heading your way!”

Introducing classical music to your child is fun, and not as hard we seem to think…. It can be daunting to search for a piece of music: the names are odd, technical descriptions that read like food labels for items produced entirely from polysyllabic ingredients that never existed in nature, and most of the composers have names that are hard to spell, too.

But coming to a Symphony Serenade concert is a way to find music that your child can connect with, and sing along with. And if you’d like to know the name of a piece of music we’ve focused on or the name of the composer you can always send us an email, we’d love to pass that information on to you (it’s not like we announce them during the show). And we’d love to give you few pointers for looking farther afield in the classical world, too. If you like X you just might like Y.

And yes, my kids did listen to classical music when they were little. And they liked it. They were moved to play a game of monster search through and behind the furniture in my family room when the radio station we listened to in Denver played the Sinfonia Antartica, and everyday at noon all the kids came running from where ever they were in the house to hear Mozart’s Impresario ring in Mid Day Mozart on that same radio station.

I think it’s what has saved Nathaniel from the horrors of the really depressing music his peers listen to, because I know I gave him a musical heritage that is deep and wide, long and curvy with twists and turns and pockets of a little bit of everything. (Except smooth jazz. I have saved him from that. And jazz fusion, too!)

So come see us on March 17^th. They’ve just released few tickets for the 9:30 show. The 10:30 is sold out on the website, but you can call the box office at 206.215.4747 and plead. And when you come, you’ll find out what you might miss if you sleep too late when the Rooster loses his ear shattering COCK-A-DOODLE DOO!

-posted by Miss Allison, who stayed up late last night with the prop making crew sewing costumes for sheep, cows, horses, ducks and a rooster, and creating a giant tree!

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

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Mar
1

Zepplin tangles Tetris, but Brahms soothes the snappy.

Posted in Bits and Pieces, Music and the brain

According to the report on the radio (start here if you haven’t read the lead in story to the “report on the radio”) it seems that most people are affected just like I am. A study was done recently (and of course, they listed where and by whom at the beginning of the report, before I was interested, so I don’t remember, but it was on Morning Addition, NPR.)

The researchers gathered two groups of college students, gave them all an assignment to do, and put them in two separate rooms. In one room they played Bach and Dvorak – both classical composers. In the other room, they played hardcore techno rock. (I really don’t know what that means, but it does sound really awful.) When the music/homework time was over, a group of professors went into each room and harshly critiqued the students’ work.

Can't you just hear the irritating music?

Now the study got interesting. The students in the techno room and the students in the classical room reacted differently to the criticism. The techno students were much more likely to get angry than the classical students. Listening to the techno music increased their levels of aggression, and decreased their happiness levels. I’m sure the students who listened to the classical music weren’t happy about having their work reviewed so harshly, but they didn’t respond the same way as the other students.

I recently had a similar experience. Last summer, we took our teenage sons and two friends to the amusement park in Idaho. It’s a six hour drive, so we took turns choosing the music we would listen to. Nathaniel, my 15-year-old son, got the first pick. He chose Led Zepplin. I was playing Tetris, and after the first song my game started to fall apart.

After the third song, I couldn’t stack the square pieces on top of each other, let alone make the zig-zags, and the Ls, and that other shape go together properly. It was really irritating. I usually play a nice clean and tidy game of Tetris. I can “fix” a tower with multiple holes and get my stack back to solid square. I very seldom ever clear a single line – the game is Tetris, right? So I clear four lines at a time.

This was the worst game if Tetris I had played in years. And I was really irritated about it. We stopped for gas and I snapped at all four boys to clean up their snack mess, and not to wander off, and to be polite in the gas station. They stared at me, kinda shocked. I like these kids, all of them, and seldom snap at them, even when they track filthy mud in the house, and leave their backpacks in front of the door and I can’t even get in the house. (I do make them clean it up, but with a smile and a joke.)

Gotta be Brahms or the Beatles.

By the time all eleven songs in the playlist were done my shoulders were hunched up and my skin hurt, it was crawling all over the place trying to get out of the car and then, thankfully it was my turn to pick the music. We listened to Brahms, and I apologized for being snappy less than halfway through the first song. It was an instant fix for me.

As a footnote, Nathaniel does listen to some dreadful music, and he likes it really loud. But recently I’ve noticed that he plays the really awful music for a little while, and then it gets swapped for Glad and the Nylons and Straight No- Chaser and the soundtrack to Glee and some wacky song sung by a Russian Bass who only says OOOO…. And I hear the Beatles and the Monkees, and I hear hope… hope that Led Zeppelin may be on the train heading out of the front door of my house, along with the other stuff that makes me cranky, so cranky I don’t even want to know their names.

-posted by Miss Allison, who wants you to head over to Facebook right now to continue the conversation by telling her what music totally drives you up a wall, makes you completely cranky and irritated, and what music soothes your soul.

Tags: listening, Miss Allison, music

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Feb
27

Bach for Cleaning, B-52′s for Baking.

Posted in Bits and Pieces

I’m doing all the blogging this week, talking about music’s affect on your emotions. I’m also going to be asking you to have a conversation with me every day on Facebook. Please talk with me!

I heard an interesting program on the radio as I drove to work one morning this week about music and how it affects your mood. I’ve always known that I was somewhat sensitive to the emotional impact of music, and that if I was in a gloomy mood I did not need to listen to Samuel Barbers’ Adagio for Strings (as lovely as it is). It is breathtakingly lovely; I can barely listen to it when I’m over the moon happy. It exudes sadness from it’s every sound wave; it actually physically hurts me to listen to it. So listening to it while already gloomy would be excruciating.

Music can intensify a mood for me. Listening to Copland’s Appalachian Spring while already in a happy mood will make me joyful, as will Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. Listening to Bach when I need to be productive will increase my ability to produce an organized closet or kitchen cabinet, or a well made bed. (I hate to make up the beds.)

These effects go beyond the classical world. I will enjoy mindless cleaning, like dusting and vacuuming and shelving books and bathroom scrubbing more if I have some mindless 1980’s new wave, a little Talking Heads, or the B-52’s, maybe some Paul Simon or Madonna. The house gets cleaned faster and I feel less grumpy about it.

But if Michael gets to the stereo before I do and Alanis Morriset pours out her broken and angry heart as I dust and vacuum, I will be cranky. I like her music, I do, but it’s not good for an activity that tends to make me less than happy anyway.

And Harry Connick Jr. gets my vote for the perfect music for making dinner or baking anything. (Funny enough, Michael is cleaning the kitchen as I write this, singing “Love Shack” GO B-52’s!)

-posted by Miss Allison, who says “Okay. Back to that interesting radio program tomorrow. But first, click over to Facebook and tell me what music you choose to listen to and for what task? (Cleaning, working out, focusing, etc.) See you there!”

Tags: listening, Miss Allison, music

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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.