Studio3Music Blog

Posts Tagged ‘Miss Allison’

Jun
26

Matching Pitch

A while ago, one of my parents asked a good question. I passed it along to Miss Allison, and she sent me a great reply. I thought you all might find this conversation as helpful as I did.

The question from Mom: When do kids tend to get good at matching pitch? The first time I heard Emma (named changed) sing I was kind of shocked that she sounded so off-key, but then I realized that most little kids seem to sound like that.

I’ve always loved singing, and Emma seems to really like it, too, so I was looking into a chorus for Emma to start in a couple years, and then my husband said he thought Emma was kind of tone-deaf like he is sometimes, but I’m hoping it’s something she’ll get better at, and she seems to be.

The question to Miss Allison: When are children able to match pitch and sing on-key?

Miss Allison’s answer: Matching pitch is a pretty advanced skill, although there are children as young as two who can do it. My experience has been that kids sing accurate intervals way before they match pitch with an instrument or another voice.

I hear kids signing the “right” song in the “wrong” key so to speak, in Our Time (ages 18 months to 3.5 years) on a regular basis and in Imagine That (ages 3 to 5) all the time. By Young Child, (kindergarten and first grade) they get better and better at matching pitch with me, though it is still a pretty on and off skill. They will get the pitch, but be flat, usually. It is also easier for them to match my sung pitch than it is for them to match the glockenspiel or the bars.

There is a certain amount of physical development that has to take place before children can really sing. The larynx has to drop (happens in infancy) and they have to be able to force enough air through the larynx to make the chords vibrate. So, the lungs and diaphragm need a certain amount of strength to support the voice.

Even if the child hears really well and has good pitch match at a young age they will continue to go flat until they are able to support their voice on some level. A lot of kids sing in a kind of monotone drone for the first few years, the voice is rising and falling in the basic pattern of the song being sung, but they are not really singing. It’s more like speak-singing.

In the end, I think pitch matching is a skill that can be taught; especially if a child is hearing good quality pitch sung live at an early age. (I’m not talking about good quality vocal production- just clean pitch- and most adults can do that if the range is reasonable.) Then, having some kind of good quality music classes in the early years – Kindermusik, of course, and music in the elementary years will teach that skill.

When I taught 6th grade, everyone could match pitch. By that time, the students had begun to distinguish who could sing and had a lovely voice versus who could match pitch, and I noticed that kids who could match pitch but weren’t passionate about music or the ones who had an average voice began to be less and less interested in music. And therefore, more and more badly behaved in music class.

It is sad, because some of those kids who didn’t have super voices could have gone on to be stars. Search iTunes for Tom Chapin and listen to any of his songs. There’s a guy with an okay voice, but great pitch, and incredible diction, and an ability to sing a story. (To really hear the skill of singing a story, listen to his “Goose Town Halloween.”)

I knew a girl who was as tone deaf as a rock until she was about 6 or 7. She joined the children’s choir at church and the director, a wonderful teacher and incredible woman, taught all the kids how to match pitch, including our little formerly tone deaf friend. I thought it was hopeless… honestly, I did. She recently went to college to major in Vocal Studies. If she can learn to match pitch, I swear anyone can!

-posted by Miss Anita, whose intention is to give parents of seemingly tone-deaf children some hope!

Tags: kindermusik, Miss Allison, Miss Anita, music, singing

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May
5

Counting Songs: Teaching 1 to 1 Ratio

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

A favorite version of Hickory, Dickory, Dock!

I (Miss Anita) thought you might like to eaves drop on an email conversation I had with Miss Allison. It involves your child’s mathematical foundation!

Here’s what Miss Allison emailed me: “Chanting numbers in a sequence (like saying 1, 2, 3…) is one skill. But counting objects and understanding the concept of what that quantity means are separate and more advanced skills. True counting implies an understanding of one to one ratios. From my (Miss Allison’s) personal experience as a mom, a pre-school teacher, a day care provider, big sister, babysitter and the kid who taught all the kids in the neighborhood to read before kindergarten, the number one is typically the hardest number for children to understand.

Finger plays and other counting games that are designed to teach one to one ratios tend to start higher, with a number like five and count down. Some examples would be Five Little Ducks, the Sea Shell poem from Creatures at the Ocean and Five Little Monkeys.

These counting down rhymes are more successful, in my experience than counting games that go up. Counting songs that go up tend to be more successful in teaching rhyming words. Examples of counting up rhymes would be This Old Man, The Ants Go Marching, Hickory Dickory, and Dr. Knickerbocker.

My question to you, since you have elementary school math experience, why does counting backwards make it easier to understand one to one ratio? It is obvious to me that it does. I just know it works better based on my experiences and common sense. I know it has a light bulb effect. I’ve seen that happen in a kid’s face. You get to one and all of a sudden the light goes on and they understand the concept. Any thoughts about the counting backwards phenomenon?

And I (Miss Anita) replied: “You’re right about the counting up rhymes like This Old Man, etc. Usually when those songs are sung they reinforce the rote memory of the number sequence. The ants march 1×1 and then 2×2 and then 3×3 etc. But you aren’t seeing those ants, pointing to them and counting them. You have to add something to make them a 1-1 teaching tool. That’s why, in our Kindermusik classes, we’ve added the ant counting cards for that song. With visuals of the ants, the children can see them and count them.

Another way to turn a song like This Old Man into a 1-1 ratio learning experience is to sing it with rhythm sticks. Every time you get to a number, stop and tap and count each tap. “This Old Man, he played one…stop…ONE TAP & SAY ONE…he played two… TWO TAPS and count out loud on each tap ONE, TWO…”

When it comes to counting backwards songs, I think the answer to the success is the emotional payoff of either excitement or satisfaction. Think about when a rocket launch counts down: 3 -2-1 BLASTOFF! So very exciting!

My boys learned to count backwards by watching the numbers on the microwave count down and chanting those numbers along with me. There was a huge payoff there, because our food was ready! When you count down, there is an END – either zero or one. (It’s really not the end since there are the negative numbers but we don’t go there with the little ones because their concrete minds aren’t ready for that yet.) So they get to one or zero and that’s the end… a very satisfying place to be.”

-posted by Miss Anita and Miss Allison, who hope that when you sing “Hickory Dickory Dock” with your child, you will add one-to-one ratio and do it like this:

‐ Hickory dickory dock, the mouse ran up the clock. The clock struck one (STOP and clap one time and say “one” while you clap it. Then say, “Let’s clap and count to one again. ONE.) and down he did run. Hickory Dickory Dock.

‐ Hickory dickory dock, the mouse ran up the clock. The clock struck two (STOP and clap two times and count the two claps ONE, TWO. Then say, “Let’s count again. ONE. TWO) the mouse said, “Peek-a-boo.” Hickory Dickory Dock.

‐ Hickory dickory dock, the mouse ran up the clock. The clock struck three (STOP and clap three times and count the three claps ONE, TWO, THREE. Then say, “Let’s count again. ONE. TWO, THREE) the mouse said, “ WHEE!” Hickory Dickory Dock.

‐ Hickory dickory dock, the mouse ran up the clock. The clock struck four (STOP and clap four times and count the four claps ONE, TWO, THREE, FOUR. Then say, “Let’s count again. ONE. TWO, THREE, FOUR) the mouse said, “ NO MORE!” Hickory Dickory Dock.

Tags: brain, language development, learning, Miss Allison, Miss Anita, music, preschoolers, toddlers

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Feb
21

Counting monkeys. And cows.

Posted in Bits and Pieces, Child Development, Education, Symphony Concerts, Things to do

I love counting songs. (There are so many of them to love!) And they all seem to have something to do with animals. (I love songs about animals!). And they all seem to have rhyming words in them. (And I love songs with rhyming words, especially if there is opportunity to change the rhyming pairs. Never ending variation options gives you a song that it really fun to sing!)

“The Ants Go Marching” is a prime candidate for counting, rhyming and word switching. There is no rule that says the little one has to suck his thumb when the ants are marching one by one; he can eat a bun or lie in the sun, or hum a little hum.

And since Velcro shoes are all the rage these days for kids, the “little one” hardly ever ties his shoes any more. He is much more likely to shout out “Boo!”, or play a kazoo, or dance with Sue, or step in glue. The variations are endless, thus making the song new and interesting every time you sing it with your child.

In class recently we’ve been doing “Hickory Dickory Dock”. Although there is a sung version of this beloved nursery rhyme I’ve been focusing on the spoken word. (I have to make myself not sing everything in class… spoken word is just as valid as sung word , educationally speaking… but I do love to sing!) Traditionally there is only one verse to this rhyme-

Hickory Dickery Dock
The Mouse ran up the clock
The clock struck one
Down did he run
Hickory dickory dock!

Yes, I know I changed it. It should rhyme. Mother Goose was just having a bad day when she wrote this one, or the translator was mad at Mother Goose , or the original printing had a mistake in it. But we all know this is the way it should be, so this is how I teach it in class.

We also know clocks strike more than just one time a day, so there’s no reason why you can’t add verses. Since this little ditty is always done as a single stanza, your child will more than likely not have any pre-conceived ideas of what should happen on two, three… all the way up to twelve. That’s another benefit of this poem; it goes to twelve, versus all the traditional chants that stop at 10.

Ten is the logical place to stop, because counting songs and poems and chants are designed to teach math, and understanding that math is all about sets of tens is the first step to understanding.

Interestingly enough, most songs and chants that count down start at five, which is one hand and half a set of ten, so they are also very useful for teaching mathematical thinking, and for visualizing subtraction.

To subtract, the pointer finger on the other hand counts down the fingers on the working hand on your way down to zero. My very favorite “work your way down to zero” finger plays are about monkeys. I really like songs about monkeys. They’re silly, and almost everything about monkeys in finger plays is funny.

As a matter of fact, I like counting songs and games about monkeys so much that our spring concert at the Symphony is entitled “Count Yourself Silly”. There will be monkeys; they will be jumping on the bed, teasing Mr. Crocodile, and irritating the Story Fairy. And since monkeys live in the jungle, that’s where we’re headed, on a boat full of bouncy pirates who like to count and rhyme.

We are focusing on pitched percussion and our arranger, Ian, is very excited. I lost track of the number of instruments he wanted. He finally said, “Most of these are small, I’m sure we can get them all on the stage”. I’ll let you all know if there will be room for us after I see his list.

And Miss Rachel, our very talented illustrator, is eagerly sketching out a new set of monkeys for the story. For those of you have been lucky enough to attend the “Put Your Left Paw In” summer camp you will be familiar with her first set of adorable monkeys from “Five Little Monkeys Sitting in a Tree” . She is creating new, cute monkeys right now for our story. And cows… she is drawing lots and lots of cows.

“COWS….? Why cows?” You might ask….

You’ll have to buy a ticket or ten of them, please, and come see…. I’m not going to give away all the secrets!!

-posted by Miss Allison, who will tell you more about rhyming words and how important they are later. In the meantime, just keep counting and rhyming.

Tags: learning, math, Miss Allison, Things to do

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Feb
7

The Dessert of Kindermusik

Posted in Our Time, Things to do

If the Activity Guide is the “meat and potatoes” of the At Home Materials, then the CD’s are dessert. This is the part that your child loves best, remembers, and asks for every day. And just like dessert, it is the culmination of a well-balanced meal of classroom activities and organized play from the book (or your own creative process) that you and your child do together at home.

I hear regularly from parents that the CD’s are a staple of all commuting, and that they are listened to at home, and at bedtime as well because their child will actually LISTEN to the CD’s over and over again.

My gut instinct tells me that they listen to their curriculum CD’s with such attentiveness because almost every song on the CD is related to an activity from class; memories when they listen to “Walk Along Rover”…. They are doing the steps of the dance in their heads when they hear “Jing Jang” or “Little Liza Jane”, and their hands become a rabbit and hop along their arms, their finger-ears flop, flop, flop, and their bunny eyes blink, blink, blink, and their bunny noses twink, twink, twink, as they listen to “I Saw a Little Rabbit.” A Kindermusik CD for an enrolled child is a doorway back to the classroom.

It is not just background music. I am quite sure if you gave a Kindermusik CD to a child who had never attended a class that they would enjoy the CD, but not like your children will. The combination of meat and potatoes followed by dessert is classic for a reason - it works!

Your child may not actually be interested in the CD at first; they may still want to listen to last semester’s CDs. But as soon as we’ve covered enough of the music on the CD with activities in class, your child will begin the process of transferring their love from Milk and Cookies to Fiddle Dee Dee. Most of the music on the CD is in a similar order to how it is introduced in class.

There are always tracks on a Kindermusik CD that we won’t use in class. These pieces are there to round out your child’s listening experience and to expose them to music they may not hear regularly. They also make the CD much more interesting to listen to.

However, these short forays into the unheard are important for another reason; they act like a recess for the child’s brain, which is working and learning while they are listening to the familiar classroom songs. Children need down-time to process what they have learned while they are in the throes of discovery.

Quiet time on the CD (whether it’s a short piece of classical music or a poem) gives them a few minutes to download before the next spurt of learning begins. This is why recess really is the most important part of your child’s school day, and why as college students we needed to take a break from studying every so often. Research shows that studying for extended periods of time is counter-productive. Every brain needs time off to process information.

Both of your story-books for the semester are also read on your CD’s. “The Animal Serenade” is on CD 1, and “This Little Piggy Played the Fiddle” is found on CD 2. (You’ll hear the voice of the founder of Kindermusik reading this book, and you’ll hear his rich bass serenading you throughout the Kindermusik repertoire of CD’s.)

On the CDs are several samples from the classical repertoire. The Scherzo from Shubert’s Trout Quintet, and The Flight of the Bumble Bee, by Rimsky Korsakov. I highly recommend Korsakov’s music, especially Scheherazade; it’s one of my all time favorite pieces of classical music.

Since Fiddle Dee Dee places an emphasis on stringed instruments, now might be a great time to check out some of the many classical pieces of music written for strings. A great place to start is Dvorak’s American Quartet, written while he was he was summering in Stillwell, Iowa, in the Czech community there. And you have some classical vocal music as well such as The Comic Duet of Two Cats by Rossini, and Summer is a’Cumin In, the first round ever to have been written down.

So, enjoy your CD’s and listen often. The more familiar your child is with the music, the faster they learn a new activity in class. And the more they learn, the sooner they are ready for extensions to those activities.

-posted by Miss Allison, who thinks that dessert is the best part of dinner!

Tags: kindermusik, learning, listening, Miss Allison, music, Things to do, toddlers

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Jan
24

Fiddle Dee Dee – NOT just 45 minutes of fun.

Posted in Child Development, Education, Family, Things We Love

Kindermusik is NOT intended to be just 45 minutes of fun once a week (though it is fun!) Kindermusik is all about what happens at home, as well as in class. In order to assist you, the parents and caregivers of the children enrolled, Kindermusik International provides you with the tools you need to continue the classroom experience at home.

Your primary resource is your Home Activity Book. I can already see you experienced Kindermusik grown-ups shaking your heads and saying, “Oh, no Miss Allison, our CD is the primary resource for play at home.” But I really mean it – the Activity Book is the base for turning your 45 minutes of class fun into a week-long foray into the world of learning through music.

Without the book, you can only re-create what we have done in class. The book provides you with tools and ideas for extending what we have done in class, and adapting the activities to suit your child at home.

So… pull out your Home Activity Book, and turn to page 4. At the bottom, you’ll find a little graph that has 6 icons. Kindermusik has taken the six areas of brain development – physical, cognitive, emotional, language, social and emotional – and given each one an icon so you can quickly identify them throughout the book.

Throughout the book, you will find little tidbits of information (we call them Foundation of Learning Statements, or FOLS for short), about different areas of development. The FOLS also tell you how the activities you are learning in class, or choosing from the book to do at home meet your child’s developmental needs.

Now, you can’t decide to just stay at home and do Kindermusik, and not come to class! The FOLS you will hear in class are not likely to be in the book, and vice versa. The combination of At Home Materials and class provide the optimum well-rounded experience.

In the book, you will also find all the words the songs, all the notated melody lines, and the words and directions for the finger plays and chants. Please don’t hesitate to make up your own words to the songs. This is an age-old tradition called piggy-backing. Did you know there are over 500 verses for Yankee Doodle, and over 100 of them are about George Washington? So be creative and make up some new verses to the songs. It might just get you in the history books!

The core of the Home Activity Book is the activities. (No surprise there!) There are games, activities and crafts, and extensions of activities we do in class that are intended to be done at home. You’ll also find the American Sign Language for several of the animals in Fiddle Dee Dee.

Some of my favorite activities:

The home-made animal stamps on page 11; you can certainly supplement your animals with other shapes from the cookie cutter drawer as well. What animal doesn’t like to look at a sky full of stars, or a rainbow of hearts?

I also love the creature seekers walk on page 12. To extend this activity at home you can create a scrapbook of the creatures you see on your walk by talking digital photos, printing them, and having your child post them in a book. Ask them about their thoughts on the creature and write them down. Dictating a child’s thoughts is a powerful tool for language development, and when your child is older and more verbally precocious (and taller than you) you will be so glad you preserved their two year old thought about worms on a path in the park. (Trust me… those cute little transcriptions from when they were two have saved my verbally audacious teenagers more than once!!)

You can create a bumblebee garden using the pieces on page 27, and the empty garden on pages 30-31. After you’ve played design master a couple of times by moving the pieces around, let your child choose where things get glued down. And if they want the flowers floating in mid air and the tree root end up and crown side down, so be it. You might just be nurturing the next Picasso.

You can nurture your own inner Picasso by making butterfly sandwiches and serving them at lunch. (page 29) And a hot dog and bun decorated with blobs of ketchup and mustard (or other condiments) in symmetrical patterns is great for the meat eaters in your family.

Actually, anything cylindrical and anything you can arrange symmetrically around it works really well – carrot sticks with dots of hummus or ranch dressing, apple slices with drops of peanut butter, caramel and chocolate sauce, a banana half and piles of blueberries, half a strawberry (one half on each side) and kiwi rounds… the options are endless and beautiful. Art food is a fun way to introduce new foods and concepts to your child- shapes and patterns colors are all easily taught while you are having a beautiful snack together.

You’ll find reading suggestions and listening suggestions throughout the book and things to listen for on your Fiddle Dee Dee CD, too.

I am deliberately skipping the instructions for the Hush Little Baby cards at this point. I love the activities in the book- but before you embark on ANY of them, be sure you scan the Hush Little Baby pictures first, so that you will have the pictures later for the in class activity… the VERY important, life altering activity…. So scan away, and then you can do any of the activities on page 18. Three sets of the cards is best, anyway; one for home, one for the car and one for your purse so that it always gets to class.

So off you go now to the Fiddle Dee Dee box; pull out that book and get some ideas for ways to spend some time playing with your child today. Feed your brain with some of those incredible bits of knowledge found in the book, and we will look forward to playing with you later this week!

Kiss your children for me!

-posted by Miss Allison, who thinks that if you are NOT in one of her classes, you should kiss your child from Miss Beth, Miss Anna, Miss Meresa, Miss Nancy, Teacher Aaron, Miss Anita, Miss Steph or Miss Colleen!