Studio3Music Blog

Posts Tagged ‘Miss Katie’

May
1

Miss Katie Confesses

Posted in Bits and Pieces, parenting

Miss Katie and one of her Kindermusik students

I have a problem. I’m caught in the existential dilemma that many, if not most women face: I’m a dreamer, a self-starter, and someone who needs to be doing something at all times. I need people, challenge, and direction to feel fulfilled. And I have goals… too many goals. However, I also want to be a mommy one day, and a wonderful mommy at that. Herein lies the problem: for some reason, I have always seen having a thriving, fulfilling career and being a great mom as being incompatible. Being an all-or-nothing kind of person, it’s hard for me to understand how I could balance the two and be great at both.

But when I look around my classrooms, I see as many different ways of parenting as I do parents. Each of you bring so many wonderful things to the table because of your personalities, your backgrounds, and your talents. I see nurses and lawyers, business owners and teachers, psychologists and photographers, who are also mommies and daddies. I see stay-at-home moms and a few stay-at-home dads, and more than one stay-at-home grandma. I DON’T see a formula; I see real people doing the best they can at raising their children, and doing a phenomenal job. Parenting is messy, and you’re way, way down in the dirt.

Here’s my confession (please don’t tell my bosses): while I’m supposed to be teaching you how to parent, you’re really teaching me. When my day comes, I will be a better mommy; not because I stay home full time, and not because I’m a Kindermusik Educator, but because I have seen great parenting modeled for me over and over and over again by you. Thank you for showing me that it’s possible to be a terrific momma and a real, breathing, goal-pursuing person at the same time.

-written by Miss Katie, who is NOT pregnant, but thanks for asking. (At least she’d better not be…)

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Mar
29

How Big Bird Changed My Life

Posted in Bits and Pieces

When I was three years old, Itzak Perlman (the concert violinist) made a cameo appearance on Sesame Street. As a faithful friend of Big Bird, I became enamored with this instrument and resolved to find a way to play one. The resourceful  and decisive child that I was, I borrowed my dad’s slide rule, took it apart and marched around the house playing my new “violin”.  It only took a couple of years for my parents to realize I was serious about this obsession. So they found a teacher, bought a tiny violin, case and bow, and I set to work.

Ten years later, as I was about to graduate from book eight of the Suzuki series, I retired from the violin to study voice. Now, as a music school graduate pursuing my dream of singing professionally, I am incredibly thankful for the importance my family placed on my violin lessons.

It’s impossible for me to say (yet researchers are working hard to answer this question) whether I love music because I grew up surrounded by it, because it’s a part of my genetic makeup, or simply because I just do. I can tell you, though, that making music has been and continues to be one of the most rewarding and important things I do. It allows me to connect with myself and with others on a level that goes beyond words. It lets me to express deep emotion, to tell a story, to captivate an audience, and to be creative in ways nothing else can. Music is my medium.

Whether or not your child graduates from Julliard, giving them the opportunity to experience and pursue music in their own way is one of the best things you can do for him or her. Kindermusik helps provide the foundation: a steady beat, tonal memory, a sense of pitch and rhythm, and most of all, a love for all things musical. Music is a language, these are its alphabet.

“Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent.” -Victor Hugo 1802-1885

-posted by Miss Katie, who hopes you will enroll your child in our Suzuki classes this summer!

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Dec
7

Easy environmentalism for the WHOLE family!

Posted in Bits and Pieces, parenting, Things to do

I realize that the life of a mom is one of constant juggling, often reacting more than acting, and taking life one day to the next. Amidst potty training, crying babies and playdates, many habits can take back-seat, or even get kicked out of the car altogether.  I’m consistently impressed by parents, who are, in some superhuman way, capable of maintaining workout routines, housecleaning and even full-on careers.

It’s no wonder that when we hear about the ways we are supposed to “go green” or “reduce our carbon footprint”, most of us think, “WHO has time for that?” So I did a little research and came up with some simple habits that we can all bring into our daily lives. Every little bit counts. Here’s the trick: get your kids involved! Teach them, by words and example, what it means to take care of our planet earth, and to pay attention to the impact of their actions. Even young children can get a grasp on the 3 R’s: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. Here are a few ideas:

Walk whenever possible. Think for a moment before you hop in the car. Can you get to where you’re going with the stroller and a good pair of shoes? Get some exercise, fresh air and save on gas and carbon emissions along the way. Show the big, bad rain clouds who is boss!

Choose reusable items. We all know by now that cloth grocery bags go a long way in cutting down on waste. Get the kiddos in on it by purchasing–or even better, making–colorful bags that they can get excited about. When you go shopping, let them carry their bag to the store, and even give them a few purchases to be responsible for carrying home. A sense of ownership goes a long way with the little ones!

Children recyclingLet them help with recycling. Place labeled bins next to or near the garbage and teach your children to sort out the plastic, glass and paper items. This is a great exercise in classification for toddlers and preschoolers! Make up a recycling song to make it really stick (My idea to the tune of “Are you sleeping”: Glass and paper, glass and paper, plastic too, plastic, too, don’t go in the trash can, don’t go in the trash can, recycling is fun, recycling is fun!)

Take advantage of youthful creativity. Before throwing something away, ask your child if they can think of a way to use it differently. Cardboard boxes become forts, jars can be vases, paper plates turn into masks, or even ice skates. They’re already doing this constantly (see Aaron’s recent post on endowed objects), so take advantage of their ideas, and you have a new (read: free) toy!

Dig in the dirt. Start a compost pile in the backyard if you haven’t already. Put the older kids in charge of the sprinkling and the aerating. If composting is totally foreign to you, read one of the many articles online to start the journey and cut back on your landfill waste in a big way. Or, for the ones who really love to dig, start a veggie garden and make it a family activity!

The bottom line: get your kids involved in what you do every day. When they see you making environmentally-friendly choices, they will want to do the same. Make it fun, and you all will keep the habits for a lifetime!

-posted by Miss Katie, who had the chore of recycling the soda cans back home in Portland… and made a fortune on 5¢ a can.

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Nov
5

Music education helps children who struggle with language.

Posted in Music and the brain

This story on NPR caught my attention last month. Exciting research was presented at Neuroscience 2009 in Chicago in October that suggests that musicians’ auditory pathways are distinctly different from non-musicians.

Nina Kraus, scientist at Northwestern University, conducted a study comparing trained musicians to the general population in how they perceive and interpret sound. Each subject heard a person reciting simple sentence, but each time they heard it, there was increasing levels of background noise. Kraus’s team of researchers discovered that the musicians were able to pick out the voice more easily and accurately than the non-musician group.

boy-celloStandard hearing tests, however, show that musicians and non-musicians ears have the same sensitivity. So what’s the difference?

It’s in the neural hearing system, Kraus says. Like a muscle, the brain gets stronger with use. “Musical experience can change how our brain interacts with sounds,” she says. “It’s almost like the brain is better able to pay attention to sound and [to] better extract meaning from sound.”  Musicians, and students of music, must pay close attention to qualities such as pitch, timing and tone. They also need to be able to listen for particular sounds amidst the cacophony of the orchestra, band or choir.

These aspects of sound are the ones that are particularly difficult for children struggling with language development. When given a simple test asking them to distinguish one sound from another, musicians excel, while people with dyslexia and other language problems do poorly. A study conducted by Dana Strait suggests that musical training could help these children who are struggling with language. “These kids seem to be impaired in the very areas that musicians excel,” says Ms. Strait. “Musical experience can change how our brain interacts with sounds”.

We as parents and teachers need to help these children in their muscle-building as much as we can. While cultivating musical home environment and bringing your child to Kindermusik classes won’t necessarily lead to raising a concert pianist, it seems that it is the best thing we can do for their ears and their language skills.

-posted by Miss Katie, who now understands why she gets so distracted in a room full of people!

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Jan
28

Miss Katie is Getting Married!

Posted in Bits and Pieces

katie-engaged-ringNate and I met 3 years ago when I got involved with the worship ministry at my church (Bethany Community Church in Greenlake). His family has gone there his whole life and he was leading a worship band at that time. We were acquaintances for a couple of years, but when I became an intern at church, we started seeing more of each other and a bit of intrigue started to develop.  In November 2007 we went to a worship leaders’ conference together and bonded over shared laughter at some of the more ridiculous aspects of the conference. That week he rallied the courage to ask me for coffee (via a very ambiguous email) and we went on our first date. After a few weeks of dating he wanted to make it “official” but I made him wait a few more weeks- I wanted to be sure. In January, I asked him to be my boyfriend because he had already asked me so many times I was sure he was getting sick of it!

Almost exactly a year later, Nate and I went on a snowshoeing trip and stopped for lunch in a cozy grove with a view of Mt. Pilchuck and a frozen river. After nibbling at his sandwich, he pulled out a gorgeous ring, told me how much he loved me and asked me to marry him! I said yes, of course, and after several minutes of tears and kisses and hugs and outburts of “WE’RE ENGAGED!!” I realized my hands were going to freeze and he pulled out a pair of gloves with a convenient hole on the left ring finger so I could still look at my beautiful ring.katie-engaged

That night, after cleaning up and making many phone calls, we arrived at his house where our families and close friends were ready to have a surprise engagement party!! I found out that everyone had been keeping secrets from me all week and had done a fantastic job (except for one near fiasco which almost gave the whole thing away!). We will be getting married on Friday July 31st of this year at our church, Bethany Community, and we couldn’t be more excited!

-posted by Miss Katie, who is happily trading in “Katie Widener” for “Katie Collins”

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