Studio3Music Blog

Posts Tagged ‘parenting’

Oct
13

Brain Rules: Every Brain is Wired Differently!

By the time I finished reading this chapter of John Medina’s interesting science-for-dummies book, Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School, I was scribbling notes frantically and reading quotes to my twelve-year-old son who was with me at Starbucks. I’m slightly suspicious that my decaf mocha wasn’t really decaf, nonetheless, it was one of my favorite chapters in the book. It has so many implications for educating our children with finesse and gives hope for greater success.

The chapter on how our brains become wired is mind blowing. That’s a bad pun, but it’s true! As learning takes place, neural connections blow apart, or split, creating new connections. Like a highway system continually under construction, more learning equals more complex neural connections crisscrossing the brain. More is good! Medina points out interesting research done on the brains of violin performers for example. Their brains resembled Seattle’s Spaghetti Bowl (For you non-Seattle readers, it is a complex section of highway on and off ramps south of town.)

It all starts at infancy, when the brain is hyper-developing. A three-year-old’s brain has two to three times the neural connections in specific regions. But he doesn’t get to keep them. Interestingly, by the time the child reaches eight, his brain development is “pruned” and back to normal. Then in puberty, another phase of frenetic neural growth happens until age 18 is reached. Doesn’t that explain a lot!

Just as kids come in all shapes and sizes in spite of age, Medina is quick to point out that brains develop as uniquely as bodies. Early and late bloomers are encompassed in “normal,” even with respect to the brain. However, what we learn creates a unique neural configuration. So our brains are customized based on our experiences, like the violin player’s. The modern science of brain mapping, where scientists can track the neurons firing (called “lighting up”), showed that even twins have individualized brains because of their unique responses to similar events.

Messy World of Brain Development

Every brain learns differently, concludes Medina and other brain researchers. One neurosurgeon, Howard Gardner, wrote a book about his findings. Called Frames of Mind; the Theory of Multiple Intelligences, Gardner suggests other intelligences besides the old IQ measurement exist. His list includes: Verbal/linguistic, musical/rhythmic, logical/math, spatial, bodily/kinesthetic, interpersonal/intrapersonal, and nature. Logically, different brain configurations would equal different skill sets. Brain surgeon, George Ojemann, maps brains and then does surgery to allow epileptic patients to get relief from seizures. As he stimulates different regions of the brain to find the trouble areas, he has observed that no universal regions for specific functions exist in the brain. That means that approximately 7 billion unique brains inhabit planet earth today.

Brain research merely reveals something we parents and teachers already know. There are no two kids under our roofs, in our classrooms, or in our neighborhoods that are exactly alike. And as we pour our hearts into educating our kids to the best of our abilities, it is a very inexact science. Medina concludes that exact thing: “The ability to understand the interior motivations of someone else and the ability to construct a predictable theory of how their mind works based on that knowledge” is what is needed to help students learn. We need to be students of our students! And that takes time and proximity. As we live and work with our kids, experience will help us discern the best ways for “teaching to be transformed into learning.”

Remember my failed experience teaching my daughter about Johnny Appleseed? What I’ve learned about brain wiring tells me that it’s ok that my kid’s learning process is messy. My daughter’s singular after-class memory of “Jerry Somebody” provides clues into how her brain works. As I continue to observe how she learns best, it will lead to more insights and a better learning experience. My expectations are shifting as I understand there are no teaching formulas. Finesse and success will come with experience. And that’s what has given me an excitement equaling a coffee buzz!

-posted by Donna Detweiler, who finds the uniqueness of brains both exhilarating and exasperating!

Tags: brain, Donna Detweiler, learning, parenting, science

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Sep
7

In Celebration of Messy

Posted in Bits and Pieces, Family, parenting

Messy is underrated. I recently heard of a movement of mothers who are trying to make messy the new “in.” I like that idea. It goes along better with the Law of Entropy: My house moves naturally toward messy without any help from me. When neat is the goal, I have to put some scrub to the tub, so to speak.

When I heard about this messy movement, it captured my attention. Are my standards too high I wondered? Am I bowing to the gods of neatness when my time could be better spent elsewhere? Mind you, we’re not talking about dishes left in the sink for days, or filthy bathrooms. We’re talking about how picked up and beautiful we feel our house should look all the time. You know that fleeting ideal– how the house looks when there are no people in it. When the cleaning lady (me) has finished and no one is home yet, or before the guests arrive for our child’s birthday party with its festive table setting.

When I heard of the messy movement, I immediately thought of a few friends who I’ve always admired for their toleration of mess—no kidding! There’s Caroline (name changed just in case she doesn’t yet see being messy as an admirable trait.) When you enter her house, you notice that her main living room has a large pop-up princess fort and one of those crawling tunnels. The Little Tykes kitchen is in the corner with the cookware and fake food strewn around. Living in a chilly, rainy climate, these toys provide an indoor large motor play place for her children. Because the living room has the most space, they use it for what their family needs most in this phase of life. On the occasions that grown-ups are over, the stuff gets moved, but on a daily basis, the living room is play central. That practical attitude gets a messy award!

Another friend of mine has a messy art table by their front door (which I blogged about earlier this year). No hiding away this messy space in shame. Art projects are not interrupted prematurely by a need to clean. Once in a while pens and paint jars are capped, but not before some have dried to a crust. Piles of paper grace the floor and scissors, crayons and glue cover the table top. A true messy haven for a budding artist, who paints and draws for hours each day I’m told.

The point of the messy movement, I would guess, is not mess for its own sake. It’s a reaction to a perfectionistic mentality. When we have an unhealthy ideal of what our home should look like, we can be so driven to achieve this unrealistic goal that we drive ourselves and our families crazy. We aren’t having any fun and neither is anybody else as we chase this illusion of a perfect home.

Parents, I have a proclamation for us: Family life is messy. Seems to me the messy movement is all about bringing balance to our lives. There’s a time to clean and a time to be messy. When our children are young, it is the time to be messy. Celebrating messy is part of celebrating kids. So let’s spend a bit less time restacking the Tupperware they’ve thrown into the cupboard (or whatever our neatness obsession is), and more time taking our kids out to the garden to play. Afterwards we can cut some beautiful flowers to put in a vase for the kitchen table. We can clear a space for it in the middle.

-posted by Donna Detweiler who hears there’s plenty of time to have a clean house (and be lonely and wish it were messy again) after the kids are gone.

Tags: babies, Donna Detweiler, parenting, preschoolers, toddlers

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Sep
4

More Music, Please!

Posted in Family, Things to do

At Kindermusik, we believe music is as good for kids as Gummi-Vites and as yummy as birthday cake and ice cream! Ever heard you kids complain about having to listen to music? Maybe opera isn’t their favorite, but most kids consume music like fishy crackers. More, please!

So the goal today is to get us thinking about how to up our kids’ consumption of good music on a daily basis. Note: I’m not talking about adding Musak to life but asking how can we thoughtfully include music in our children’s lives which will enrich their lives and, as research shows, their brain development.

Here are a few ideas to get us thinking about how to tune in to more music throughout a typical day.

Morning: How about teaching our kids to start their day with music? If our children don’t already have their own music machine, it’s never too early. Little hands love to make music happen all by themselves. For toddlers, a cassette player or a low end CD player is perfect. Fisher Price makes a classic cassette player that can even survive a bouncing solo trip down a flight of stairs. We know. At a favorite thrift store we can find old music machines that are perfect for children to use without parental oversight. When they break, we’re usually out less that $10!

V-Tech and Fisher Price make varieties of button pushing, music making balls, caterpillars, keyboards etc. It’s wise to look for musical toys that have tunes that we like too: Some have classical fare. Others a variety of classic folk tunes. Most of us avoid the toys with repetitive ditties that stick annoyingly in our heads for days to come.

For morning listening, an accessible basket or book shelf can contain a selection of music they can pop in first thing. We have picked these out together at the library, music store or from the family collection. Depending on our families’ taste and tolerance for morning noise, we can choose Kindermusik CDs, wake up music like John Phillips Souza marches, mellow or peppy praise songs, or story songs. The choices are endless. The point is to make the choices versus letting the radio DJ’s choose; though that’s not bad if we have a station that chooses the songs we love.

Older kids may have an IPod which can be loaded with selections, however because listening with ear buds cuts our child off from the family community, I wouldn’t encourage the habit of using them unless travelling or in a situation where individualized entertainment is happening. An IPod docking station with good speakers works great for sharing music as a family.

Mid-morning Snack/Music breaks: Consider adding a music selection to snack time as a part of the routine for preschoolers. They love to listen together or with a parent, and will likely clap or sing along. Having musical instruments of their own available increases the fun.

Lunch time: We are more likely to sit with our preschoolers at lunch time, so it can be an opportunity to share music that we love. We can chat about the kind of songs, the instruments, musical patterns, or simply tell the story of why we love them. Choosing new music from the library can make a fun, listening memory with our kids. Do we like the new CD or not? Why? Can we hear the tuba, or the piccolo? Can we hear a repeated line of music? Does it make us want to march, dance, cry or take a rest?

Afternoon rest time: Surprisingly, I vividly recall my own preschool nap time with affection. My teacher would play Disney recordings as we lay quietly on our mats. Cinderella was my favorite. Today there are so many delightful story/song recordings available. Now that I have school age children, listening to radio drama has often been a highlight of our homeschool day.

Dinner time: When my son was newborn, my husband would come home from work, put on a CD and recline in the chair with our son on his chest. They enjoyed hours of music together in this manner. By the time our boy was a toddler, he would flap and wave his arms gleefully when one of their favorite CDs was played. Those two share a close relationship. I suspect the shared music helped create their bond. Listening to music as a family at dinner time can create lifelong memories for kids. The winding down time right before or after dinner is also a good time listening to story or music recordings.

Bedtime: Bedtime routine lends itself naturally to music. Many kids like to fall asleep to a beloved lullaby CD. The calming effect of music is legendary. From Brahms lullabies to Jim Brickman piano solos, the options are endless. The challenge is to try some new ones now and then. Kids can fall in love with more than one bedtime CD.

Kids can never get enough of the sweet stuff of life, which includes music. So, how about giving them some more…please.

-posted by Donna Detweiler, whose musical taste is quite varied, but she has a sweet spot of bluegrass.

Tags: babies, brain, Donna Detweiler, music, parenting, preschoolers, Things to do, toddlers

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Aug
29

Encouraging Your Beginning Reader

Posted in Child Development, Education

Do you have a budding read at your house? Would you like to have one? I recently wrote about how to recognize signs of reading readiness in your young child. I’d like to expand on it with super practical suggestions for doing reading at their level. Here are some simple, fun, hand-on activities you can do to encourage and build their reading skills.

1) “Trix is for Kids”—Do you remember the magnetic power of a cereal box? Sure it was the sugary content that hooked us in, but who didn’t sit and slurp cereal out of a bowl while pouring over the attractive words and cartoons on the box? Cereal marketers are masters at attracting kids. What slogans are stuck in your mind? “Coo coo for Cocoa Puffs” or “The Breakfast of Champions”? So, why not take advantage of their expertise and use the boxes to your advantage. Keep the boxes out on the table and let them do their magic.

2) Magnetic, Colorful Letters—This retro set has really never gone out of style. That’s why it’s called a classic. The 26 letters of the alphabet are perfect manipulatives for little hands. Just don’t make the mistake of buying a set that is too small! Letters should be at least 1 ½ to 2 inches tall. As growing brains are beginning to recognize patterns and sounds that letters make, playing with magnetic letters creates lots of opportunity for “Ah Ha” moments such as when they realize C-A-T suddenly means that black furry pet that purrs! A large metal cookie tray can sub for a fridge if yours happens to be the trendy non-metallic brushed stainless steel kind.

3) Word Match—Writer Amanda Morin suggest that you play a matching game to encourage pre-reading. Write common words such as chair, lamp, wall or toy box and each of 2 index cards. Tape one of the set on the item, and then let your reader make the match with her deck of words.

4) Sequencing Cards—Here’s another suggestion from Amanda Morin: Make a set of cards that tell a familiar story. You can copy pictures from a favorite story book and cover up the words, or draw your own, like a comic strip. Have your child put the story cards in the right order and then tell you the story using the sequencing cards.

5) Homemade books—Many fun ABC books are available at your library. I mentioned a few favorites in my last blog. But why not make your own? Cutting out pictures from magazines, or drawing your own pictures to illustrate the ABC’s can be fun for parent and child. Your imagination is the only limit on this project. Computers, crayons, pens, glue, copy machines, macaroni noodles, pipe cleaners. You take it from here. About.com special education section also suggests making books that emphasize patterns such as: “Blue is for the sky”and “Blue is for Bluejays,” or “Ants are little,” and “The box is little,” and so on.

It bears repeating that the goal of early reading instruction is not achievement but pleasure. Reading should be fun and exciting, not scary and difficult. So don’t worry about how your child is doing in comparison to others. Just be intentional about exposing him or her to lots of written language in a playful and carefree manner. I hope these activities help get you going.

-posted by Donna Detweiler who wants to remind you that each child learns to read in his or her unique timing.

Tags: Donna Detweiler, learning, parenting, preschoolers, reading, Things to do

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Aug
25

Happy Trails to You!–Even With Preschoolers

Posted in Bits and Pieces, Family, Things to do

Travelling is the curse/blessing of summer. Whether it gets a “C” or “B” often depends on our personality, kid’s ages, and planning.

Some of us live for change: we rearrange furniture willy nilly, drive home a different way daily, and never eat at the same restaurant twice in a row if we can help it. The change of pace brought by travel is the spice of life for us.

Others relax in routine, savoring the same cup of coffee in the same mug, sitting in the same comfy chair each morning. Why change a good thing they reason. Travel disrupts routine pretty thoroughly. However, even routine lovers are often willing to embrace the variety of travel, finding its spice tolerable as long as it’s not too much or too long.

Another factor contributing to whether travel gets a “C” or “B” is the age of the children journeying with us. Travel stress tends to have an inverse relationship to our children’s ages. When they are little, stress can be big! Planning can determine the grade.

During the years we were growing our family, we lived more than 1500 miles away from grandparents. Every Christmas and summer, we hopped on a plane to renew family ties. Our trip took a minimum of 12 hours door to door and involved cars, buses and airplanes. Often I made these trips solo, with my husband following later due to work. Obviously, I was very motivated. And I experienced lots of grace too.

Two months after my daughter was born, I was a bridesmaid in my friend’s out-of-town wedding. I had to bring my newborn along. As the plane took off, the usual polite seatmate chat commenced. Amazingly, I discovered the fatherly man seated beside me was a close family friend of our pastor whom I knew well. During the subsequent layover, he helped with all the paraphernalia and even held her while I freshened up. That was grace.

Flying solo again later that summer, my 4 month old daughter and 2 ½ year old son were along. “I’ll bring his car seat for the plane,” I reasoned, thinking he’d be more manageable confined for 4 hours in a seat that better fit his size. Bad Idea! Unfortunately, the car seat raised my toddler’s busy feet up to the perfect level and angle for him to kick the back of the seat in front of him. At the conclusion of the flight, I apologized and told the poor traveler in front of us that I hoped it hadn’t been too bad. “Never been worse,” he gruffly replied. I lapsed into an embarrassed silence and slunk down to the baggage claim where a kindly gentleman approached me. “Don’t worry about that guy,” he said, “He was the whiniest passenger I’ve ever sat next to.” And off he walked. At least my conscience was salved a bit. Needless to say, skip the car seat!

Another lesson I learned the hard way was to avoid the bulk head seating. When the plane was preparing for takeoff, an impatient flight attendant demanded my diaper bag be placed above as there was no place to stow carry on articles in front of me. That extra room at my feet did NOT make up for the stress of take-off and landing without access to my mom “supplies.”

While we can’t completely eliminate the stress of travelling with kids, planning can make a big difference. My best tool has been a bag of incentives which I call “the Airplane Store.” Every ½ hour or more, I pronounce the Airplane Store is open. The kids close their eyes and receive something: a toy, trinket, coloring book, small stuffed animal or something else I’ve come up with from McDonalds, a thrift store, or dollar store. I collect these all year long. As they got older, each child receives one bigger item, a DVD, book or coveted stuffed animal. The time passes so much more quickly for the kids with the Airplane Store to look forward too.

It’s August and many of us take our last trip of summer. We can feel school looming ahead. I’ve been packing and planning for our trip. The Airplane Store is in my backpack and our traditional airport food, “Lunchables,” is in my cooler. Soon we’ll be off. Though we won’t know what grade this trip will get until we arrive, we’re hoping for a solid “B”.

- posted by Donna Detweiler, who recommends flat-sided crayon for your toddler version of the Airplane Store.