Bonjour!

As some of you know, I was off once again to see some of my family who live in France.  I love it there, and the people are so nice and inviting!  My cousin, his family and some friends live outside of Paris.  My sister and her family live in the French Alps in a small village with great skiing! The landscape is amazing and the food is incredible.  And although we live thousands of miles apart, thanks to the internet and Skype, I can visit and see my family and friends who live all over the world.  It IS a small world after all!

So here are some fun facts about France and a little French lesson too:

Capital: Paris

Language: French

Ne vous escaladez les montagnes? (Do you climb mountains?) The highest mountain is Mont Blanc in the French Alps. It rises to 4,807m (15,771 ft). Mount Blanc is also the highest peak in the whole of Europe. Btw, I could see it when we were skiing!

Vous aimez le fromage? (Do you like cheese?) More than 350 kinds of cheese are made in France.

Avez-vous une bicyclette ? (Do you have a bicycle?) Every summer more than 100 professional cyclists race in the Tour de France. The race is approximately 2,000 miles long. The race lasts up to three weeks and is held in July. The route changes from year to year.

Vous aimez l’art? (Do you like art?) The Louvre is one of the largest art museums in the world. Some of the paintings exhibited there are from the French artists Monet, Cezanne, and Renoir.  The Mona Lisa by Leonardo Da Vinci is there too.

Avez-vous faim? (Are you hungry?)  Then try some dishes such as quiche, soufflés, mousse, pâté, croissants, crêpes, French bread and my personal favorite….fondue.

J’aime la Tour Eiffel! (I love the Eiffel Tower!) Visit here for facts about the Tower.

-posted by Miss Beth, who is very glad to be back with you all in class, even though she loves to travel!

Circle dancing (literally – dancing with a group of people while standing in a circle) is not only fun, but it’s good for you and your child too!  We help build a community together when we are doing circle dances…..we’ve actually been doing that for centuries!  

A circle dance gives your child the opportunity to learn about the differences between “self-space” and “shared space” in an emotionally secure environment.  This type of dance is joyful, sociable, and simple, and yet it forms a ritual in the way that it is repeated over and over.

Did you know that when you dance that your body releases endomorphs (that chemical in our body that makes you feel good)?  Dancing is a great form of exercise that improves coordination and muscle tone.  Emotionally, dancing helps people to feel happy and confident and can even allow you to explore feelings that might be more difficult to express verbally.  Dancing can reduce stress and helps with both your circulatory and respiratory health.

In class we have been exploring a variety of movement concepts as we move to music.  This type of activity helps to develop your child’s vestibular system in several ways – teaching gravity, balance, and helping them gain a sense of where their body is in space.  A well-developed vestibular system provides emotional security, good muscle tone, develops auditory language and visual-spatial processing.  All this while you’re having fun dancing!!

So take some time to dance with your child.  You will be forming memories that will last well beyond the 2-4 minute song!!

-posted by Miss Beth, who likes to dance her way through cleaning her house!

Ever lost something and then thought “Hmm… I wonder where I put that?”  Well, now you and your child can have fun looking for the misplaced items.  Just change the words of this Our Time Away We Go song and instead of finding frustration, you and your child will find laughter and a good time looking for things.  

For example, the other day I just couldn’t find my purse, so I started sing “Where oh where did I put my purse? Where oh where did I put my purse?”  All of sudden, I remembered that I’d left it in the car, and I happily went out there singing “Found it, found it, here is my purse!”  Luckily, not too many neighbors were home at the time and they all know what I do for a living, so when I break out into song it doesn’t really faze them!

I love hearing that my Our Time classes have already started to enjoy this game at home too!  Even on the first day of class, one mommy came running back into class saying that her child was jingling her keys as they were leaving! 

Singing with your child not only helps build self-confidence, but it is a wonderful way to bond as well.  Just as in story reading, singing directly exposes the singers to patterns of language, including rhythm, speech sounds, syntax and rhyme.

For your older child, try singing a song and allowing your child to fill in the blanks. (“Twinkle, twinkle, little ________”.)  By doing this, you are developing her sense of inner hearing as related to pitch and melody. 

Singing a song in your mind is akin to thinking up a story or making a plan without speaking out loud.  Remembering the sequence adds an additional level of complexity.  All these are vital life skills.

-posted by Miss Beth, who happily sings at any chance she gets…..including the grocery store when looking for the bread!

Recently, our classes have been invaded by fish, dolphins, and sharks.  Sea life puppets that is!  Puppet play is one of the best ways to help your child learn to express and vocalize their feelings.  Even shy children can use a puppet to make communication easier.

Puppets are also great for helping a child through a change – a move, a new sibling, or loss of a loved one.  A child may answer a question with more honesty while talking to a puppet, rather than to the adult who is holding the puppet. Puppets allow the freedom to express, process and work through fears. When played with, puppets come to life!

Babies love the textures and visual stimulation that puppets offer. Try a “peek-a-boo” puppet (one that pops out of a hidden place like in this blog’s picture) for a fun game sure to bring out smiles and giggles. Puppets encourage interaction between parent and child, which is a prerequisite for optimal learning. Finger puppets provide wonderful distraction for fussy babies and are small enough to carry while traveling.

For toddlers, puppets offer a chance to practice fine motor skills by opening and closing the puppet’s mouth with a hand, or by moving a finger to make a little puppet move.  Singing songs together with your new puppet friend is a wonderful way to learn new songs and nursery rhymes.

Preschoolers and early elementary students love knock-knock and other jokes. Adding puppets to the jokes make them even more hilarious! (Even the ones that don’t make any sense to us grownups.) As storytelling and imaginary play begins to develop, puppets make great props, and help provide story “material”.

Puppets offer a way to practice conversational and social skills.  Your puppet talks and then it’s my puppet’s turn.  And finally, children of all ages love to be serenaded by a puppet. 

Here’s one of my favorite grown-up puppet shows, called Potter Puppet Pals and the Mysterious Ticking Noise.

And for your children, don’t forget the classic Kermit the Frog News Flash on Sesame Street! Here’s a whole bunch (cause I couldn’t choose just one).

-posted by Miss Beth who loves all puppets, especially the manta ray living at the studio!

We’ve had a lot of fun coming up with lots of creative rainy day play ideas in my Imagine That classes for preschoolers: from drawing, to reading a book, to traveling in a space ship!   The class has been traveling (in our musical imaginations) to Grasshopper Park on a Tricky Trail.  It zig zags, curves, and spirals all the way there.  These three shapes are the basis for all of the letters children will need to write!

So, get out some paper and crayons and see how many colors you can use as you draw zig zags, curves, and spirals.  Tape the paper to the wall. Writing on a vertical surface is easier and less frustrating for young children, as they need to make large motions with their arm and shoulder. Not until about 2^nd grade do children begin to move only their wrists and fingers when writing.

Then, get some blue or green painters tape, and make zig zags, curves, spirals and straight lines all over the floor to make your own Tricky Trail. Run, hop, crawl and tiptoe over your trails while you sing “What Shall We Do”. The version I’ve included here is from ABC, Music & Me, and says “What Shall We Do on a Rainy Day?” The regular lyrics are on your See What I Saw CD.

What Shall We Do! (Click on the link to play the music.)

When you get tired of traveling on your tricky trails, turn them into roads for your cars and build a city with blocks and boxes and anything else you have around the house to build with.

-posted by Miss Beth, who likes zig zags best!

For the last two weeks in my classes, frogs have been “jumping” at the chance to play with us!  That’s because we’ve been using frog guiros as our percussion instruments while working on steady beat.  The great thing about a guiro is that you can both scrape and tap it.  And when you scrape it, it sounds like the “ribbit” of a frog.  Holding the striker develops the fine motor skills that needed for writing, cutting, buttoning and tying a shoe!

Many of you have asked to buy these cute guiros. Analiisa is currently working on purchasing some for retail sale, and I’ll let you know as soon as we begin taking orders. They will arrive in time for holiday gift-giving!

All my classes have been singing a silly song about frogs called, “Gang Goo.” 

If you don’t know the song, you can listen here:

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Here are some more fun verses that you can add to Gang Goo at home:
Grrr! Grrr! Went the big brown bear one day
Grrr! Grrr! Went the big brown bear
Grrr! Grrr! Went the big brown bear one day
So they all went Grrr! Grrr! Grrr!
But we all know bears go huggy-huggy-huggy, huggy-huggy-huggy, huggy-huggy-huggy
We all know bears go huggy-huggy-huggy,
They don’t go Grrr! Grrr! Grrr!

Wiggle, wiggle, went the little orange worm one day
Wiggle, wiggle, went the little orange worm
Wiggle, wiggle, went the little orange worm one day
So they all went wiggle, wiggle, wiggle!
But we all know worms go squishy-squishy-squish, squishy-squishy-squish, squishy-squishy-squish
We all know worms go squishy-squishy-squish
They don’t go wiggle, wiggle, wiggle!

Splish, splash, went the big blue fish one day
Splish, splash, went the big blue fish
Splish, splash, went the big blue fish one day
So they all went splish, splash, splish!
But we all know fish go na-nee-na-nee-na! na-nee-na-nee-na! na-nee-na-nee-na!
We all know fish go na-nee-na-nee-na!
They don’t go splish, splash, splish!

Actions:
Bear: Grrr!-claws like a bear in front of you; huggy-huggy-hug neighbor(first right then left)
Worm: wiggle-wiggle finger like worm; squishy-squishy-squish -like squishing worm between hands
Fish: splish-splash-swim hand in front of you; na-nee-na-nee-na -thumb on nose wiggle fingers

Now, make up some of your own verses!

-posted by Miss Beth, who sings “La, La went the Kindermusik teacher one day….but we all know she goes giggle giggle giggle!”