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…

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.

So although your play set (see my blog post yesterday), and your literature books don’t seem related – they are.  These components of your At Home Materials provide different ways for your child to engage the world of words.

Books offer a wonderful source for children to hear our language in action. There are lots of things you can do with a book besides reading it: count things, identify objects and colors, find opposites and matches. But the text is the heart and soul of a book and together with the illustrations, they create another reality for your child to visit, rhymes to discover and characters to fall in love with. 

Your Kindermusik Literature Books aren’t related to the toyshop plotline of this class. As Jack and Hans travel around in the “trips” portion of the plotline, they meet storytellers everywhere they go – and reading is an integral part of the Kindermusik classroom experience. (A lot of parents wonder if the books should “match” the curriculum, but it’s really all about good literature and the specific developmental purpose the books serve.)

Story time in class is a social experience. Yes, it’s about the book and the language, but it is also about the jostle in the circle, making sure everyone can see, learning to wait your turn to contribute to the conversation about the book, using words to solve the social difficulties that happen whenever more than one child is on the same physical space.   

The reading you do with your child at home serves an entirely different purpose – you can focus more on the text, illustrations, and content. A book read at home can be twice as long as a book in class. A child will sit in your lap for much longer than in a crowded circle on the floor. The emotional grounding that full body contact provides gives you the opportunity to really delve into a book. 

Here’s a really fun thing to do, even if you don’t have Tippity, Tippity, Too: You are going to read the lines in a slightly different order than written in the book.

Read: Tippity tippity too. Who are you? Tippity, tippity tat. I am a ­­­_____. Your child will see the visual cue on the page and fill in the word “cat”.

Do this for each page. The last page has a whole bunch of animals on it, so all you need to do is repeat this same pattern, adding a “t” in place of the first sound or blend of the word. Like “tamel” for camel, or “tion” for lion.

Now use this same pattern for items in the room (you might need to point at the object if your child needs a hint): Tippity tippity too. Who are you? Tippity, tippity tireplace. I am a ­­­_____.  (fireplace)

Finally, use this for names of people your child knows, even if they aren’t in the room. This is sure to produce lots of giggles! Tippity tippity too. Who are you? Tippity, tippity Tindy. I am ­­­Aunt _____! (Cindy)

-posted by Miss Allison, who encourages you to have fun with words wherever you go!

I love the play set for Toys I Make, Trips I Take.  I know I always caution you in class not to open the play set in class or in the car….all those little pieces just begging to be lost or ripped by little fingers anxious to play with them. 

But, when you get home, I want you to punch out the play set pieces for your child and put them in a container that is easily accessed.  (The zipper pouch they come in is a great place to store the pieces, and the set background can go in their backpack.) The play set is a wonderful way for your child to re-create the story from class, and to create their own story variations.  

Your child’s play set is a doorway into a world of their own making. The play set opens to a universe that has been carefully crafted to encourage language development.

When your child gets the play set out and begins the process of acting out the characters, he is practicing communication skills. He is figuring out how people talk to each other and the play set allows him to do this with pretend characters, and to try out new words and ideas, without fear off mistakes or social errors with “real” people. 

Conversation is a complex process, and requires a great deal of practice.  Children need a safe place to figure out how to put words together to communicate an idea.  Pretend play gives children the necessary space for practicing. So, whether he is playing Super Heroes or house with his friends or playing alone with his Kindermusik play set, he is learning how to master the complexities of our language and the nuances of words. 

Children learn a great deal of what they need to know from conversing with adults, but they need these forays into the imaginary world for rehearsing what they’ve learned.

-posted by Miss Allison, who loves all the funny and clever and imaginative conversations your children have every week in class!

We’ve been playing with tempo recently in Imagine That.  Preschool age children love learning tempo, because no matter how long we spend on slow, they know we will eventually get to fast – and that means running!

Tempo allows us to introduce some of the beautiful Italian terminology that all musicians use.  Largo means slow. Adagio means moderately slow, but largo is the very slowest tempo marking there is. (I do admit, though, that the word adagio is a more beautiful word than largo…) 

When a child moves their body slowly, they are mastering gross motor muscle control.  I love to watch them move in slow motion because they don’t really know how to move slowly. Some of them do a stop motion technique – they move and freeze, then move and freeze over and over again. Some of them inch along; their bodies full of tension and seemingly ready to explode with full-blown motion at any instant. 

Some of them just stop and watch me (We do lots of slow motion activities in acting classes, so I am really good at it!) I know they are watching me so that they can figure out how to do it – and soon they begin to try to stretch out their movements, and extend their limbs to the farthest point away from their bodies. Their facial expressions slow down and delight fills their eyes as they begin to realize that they are suddenly in control of this marvelous thing they call their body. 

Because, let’s face it, when you’re a preschooler, you very often feel as if your body is in charge of you. The need to move is so overwhelming that even when your internal child knows you need to sit, like for circle time, your body is demanding that you move, and mostly you feel powerless to stop it.

Learning to move slowly assists in giving your preschooler the much needed confidence they need to know that they are, indeed, in charge of their body. 

A Simple Way to Practice at Home
Put on some slow classical music and have a slow motion dance. You may need to invent a story (boys are more likely to require a reason to move slowly) to explain WHY you want them to move in slow motion. Maybe their super hero persona has been zapped by a slow motion ray by their arch nemesis, or their fire fighter persona is trying to walk through a vat of maple syrup to save a kitten in a burning tree… any little scenario will do. A prop will make this game more fun and loosens up their inhibitions- and yours too! Scarves and streamers are really good options. For you super hero – a cape is always best.  

Don’t have slow classical music? Go to iTunes and search for LARGO. Most classical composers named their music in descriptive terms, so the tempo setting is often listed in the title. I also searched for LENTO (just a little faster than Largo) and ADAGIO. One word of caution: I would steer away from anything with lyrics because the story in the song may inhibit your child’s motions, and creativity. Instrumental music allows them to create their own story.

-posted by Miss Allison, who sends you off you to search for LARGO. Let today be a cyber shop and dance till you drop day!

If you came to our Holiday Spectacular Concert, you saw the beautiful and giant ”12 Days of Christmas” book we created for the show. We thought you and your children would like to see it again. Since we can’t give each of you a personal copy of the 4′ x 8′ book, here it is in digital format.

Click on the image below to see the book full-size and to begin the music. As you hear the song, flip the pages in time to the words. (If you click the little x in the upper right hand corner, all the ads will disappear.) Please feel free to share this with your family and friends. Enjoy!

-posted by Analiisa on behalf of all of us at Studio3Music, who wish you a very warm and happy Hanukkah and Christmas season, filled with love, joy and peace.