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!

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!

Yesterday, you read a really great post by Aaron about open-ended play. So, I decided to ask everyone here at Studio3Music what their manipulative and toy “must haves” were. Here are their candid and creative answers.

Kim – The best gift I EVER purchased Hallie was a sensory table! I dump water in the summer, pinto beans in the fall, sand in the spring, snow in the winter. Found that table at Target for only $30 – the best investment.

Stacey – Mr. Potato Head. We have a marble set that Isaac and a couple of his older friends played with for an hour! A marbleworks set with the pieces where they put it together, and then drop them through.

Katie - I’d definitely have to say dress-up clothes. They represent the portal into becoming somebody else, anyone else… 

Allison - You know- my boys played with PVC pipe and connectors that Michael bought for them at the hardware store for years and years, too. (See Jes’s list below.)  They built all kinds of wacky Dr. Suess style things out of them and then rolled things through them- everything from marbles to hot wheel cars….

And stuffed animals.  They were big into stuffed animals.  They were the action heroes of our house….

I say all children need capes- in as many different colors as you can swing.  A good cape and be a cape, wings, a fairy princess skirt, a tent, a blanket, a time machine and a tunnel.   I made the boys capes- so easy to make!! And I only got rid of the last of them just a couple of years ago.  Other dress up clothes are a bonus as well, but capes are the foundation for a dress up box.

I also think they need blocks.  Thousands and thousands and thousands of them….

Aaron - Legos, lincoln logs are a must, and of course playdough. A good paint set is necessary. And tons and tons of blocks. Tons.

Anita - Dominoes (around age 3), Zoobs, Humungous Scarves, Bilibos… Pretend Food (we have plastic but I’d buy wooden if I had it to do again. I can’t tell you the HOURS of imaginative play and the vast array of creatures that has been fed with that food.) My boys are 8 & 10 and still play with all of those things. 

Beth - Boxes…tissue boxes to refrigerator boxes…paint them up or leave them as is.  Oh, and paper and crayons and finger paint.

Jesikah - Boy…everybody has listed just about everything on my list!  Blocks, dress-up and stuffed animals are what my kids play with just about every day.  Also, they love simple art supplies like paper, pencils, markers and crayons. 

But they play continuously with everyday items, too.

So here is a list of household items that my kids never get enough of:

Blankets & Pillows – they have been mud puddles, magical lakes, walls and roofs for a fort, snow drifts, stepping stones, even an ant farm in garden dirt  (their beds are rarely made!)

Chairs – they become the foundation for the fort, when placed in a straight line it has been a bus, a train, a submarine, airplane, rocket ship.

Measuring cups – they started out as a teething/exploration item and are now pretend play objects that have held very powerful potions, yucky medicines, and even alien water!

The strangest object that is a coveted toy that belongs to a friend of my boys. It’s a 4-5” wide piece of black plastic pipe that had an attached connector piece near the middle – for over a year that toy is a must when my boys get together with their friend who is the proud owner of this construction site toss-out.  It has been more objects in their pretend play than I can name!

Colleen - I just bought 4 fabulous bird puppets at Costco for less than $8!   They can be mommies, or daddies, or babies, or friends, or….???

Nancy - Blocks! Paper cups! Everyday items like straws, scarves, packaging materials and boxes! The item my kids played with longest that was an actual toy was a plastic toddler slide from Toys R Us..when they got too big to slide down it they turned it over and jumped up and down on the underside of it!

Analiisa - Well, here at the end I am going to talk about the things that do cost a bit of money to invest in, but have been played with for years at my house, through various ages and stages. Which makes them TOTALLY WORTH IT! With a bit of legwork these things can be found on Craig’s list, Ebay, garage sales or consignment stores. Or… with the help of present money from Grandparents and Aunties or Uncles.

All of these things are good for both boys and girls. Boys will need to grow up knowing how to cook, you know!

A kitchen. If you hate plastic, Costco sells wooden ones around Christmas time. At my house, we have a great wooden one from Melissa and Doug. (I can special order it for you.) And I agree with Anita – wooden food.

A dollhouse. It doesn’t have to be “the latest version”. Ours came from our neighbor as a hand me down. We got it for Rob when he was in speech therapy. Awesome for vocabulary development and the beginning of pretend play.

Playmobil. My favorite toy of all time. My children (almost 4, almost 8, almost 11) have been playing with it for years. TOGETHER!! And still do. One of those things (along with legos and the wooden train set) that I’ll save for my grandchildren. Which hopefully some day, (far in the future, please!) I’ll have.

-posted by all of us, who wish your children many happy hours of open-ended play!

In Kindermusik, it’s rare to ever call hoops by their actual name; usually they’re mountains, meadows, or even puddles. In fact, last week my toddlers we’re ecstatic to “hop-a-doodle” around their “meadows.” With my early elementary kids, they loved playing the rhyming “Dr. Foster” game with their “puddles.” Even my preschoolers were looking forward every week to taking the “tricky trails” with their imaginary friends in our story “Josh and Katie.”

At the end of the week, I realized that a bunch of plastic 2 dimensional circles managed to not only thoroughly entertain all the children, but more importantly helped them learn important skills like how to jump on one foot, how to communicate with each other to go through “the tunnel”, and even how to work on their special awareness. All these important learning concepts were addressed by using something that costs around $5.

Funny thing is, in the same week, I was talking to a dad at my preschool, and he was mentioning how he just spent $30 on a toy that was supposed to be geared to his son’s learning, yet after the first week, his 3-year-old never touched it.

So if children can make a hula-hoop be a mountain, or a puddle, or a meadow, and never tire of it, then what separates the hoops from that very expensive gadget at the toy store? Why do they love the cardboard box more than the toy inside?

It all boils down to how children play. Both parents and childhood professionals alike can tell you children not only love to pretend but it’s how they learn. Children can grow in all domains of development through play. Often, when children pretend, they associate an identity with an object in their game. A block is not simply a block, it’s the start of their hospital. Then more blocks become the road they need to connect it to their house. Then perhaps from the hospital, the children will decide to use their scarves as wings and become helicopters, spinning away onto another game, and so on. We call these objects endowed objects because the scarves, for example, would never be called those; they would be endowed to be butterfly wings.

We see these elements of pretend play particularly in children 3 years old and up, however children learn these skills much earlier, in toddler hood. That is why in Kindermusik classes, we use these elements as the basis for the songs and activities. In fact, manipulatives in Kindermusik such as hoops, scarves, and streamers all have one thing in common: they are open-ended. The more open-ended an object is, the more roles it can have in play.

We see children assign multiple identities to an object all the time. One day, a scarf is a butterfly wing, but the next, it’s a leaf. When children can use an object in their play in many different ways, they will pick it up again and again. Children can play with legos for years because it can be so many different things! When children are autonomous and own their learning, they not only enjoy learning more, they retain it better. This comes from choosing how to learn a certain concept.

 So when you’re at the store this holiday season, think about that toy you’re buying and if it will be worth the cost. Some of those higher-priced toys are really cool, I am a big fan of some of those science-oriented toy stores, but some are just too closed-ended to keep our children’s attention with their growing minds!

-posted by Teacher Aaron, who still has his first set of legos!

Our first Symphony Serenade Concert this year falls on Halloween, so you can imagine what the Seattle Symphony wanted our subject matter to be! In the process of writing the script, I got to thinking. What is it about Halloween that kids like so much?

I honestly don’t think it’s the candy (though that’s what may first come to children’s minds!)   I think the pleasure of Halloween is linked to the emotional developmental milestones that young children are working through in the first 5 years of life.  It is emotional maturation (specifically, the development of self-identity) that drives a child’s growth in all other areas.

The process that children go through to build self-identity is often difficult for the grownups to understand.  Most of us don’t remember this part of our own development, which happened between 18 months and 5 years. We may remember events and people ( I remember a snowstorm when I was barely two and my great grandmother who died when I was four). But I don’t recall a lot about the process of becoming who I am.  So when our children begin this journey, it may be a mysterious process for us.

We all love the endearing part of the process that happens at about 18 months. There is lots of peek-a-boo and hide and seek games. Your child comes when you call their name; usually at a run and straight into your open arms.  They call you “mommy” and they are fully aware now that it is your name. By this point, you can play the “where’s your nose, where’s mommy’s nose” game, and they know the difference between you and them. 

Then there’s the irritating side. They fall on the floor in the middle of the grocery store and wail like a banshee because you won’t let them climb up the cereal display.  They smack the child who lives next door and snatch away a toy, and then lay on the floor and wail like a banshee when you take it away and give it back to the other child. Who, by the way, won’t play with it anyway because she’s also lying on the floor wailing like a banshee. And they wail like a banshee when you leave them with grandma to go to a movie with your spouse. And this is the grandma who lives 3 doors down and sees the child everyday of their life, not the one who lives far away and came for a visit once when they were a newborn.

Both the irritating and the endearing parts of this process are normal.  As a child begins to separate their identity from their mother (somewhere between 16 and 18 months) they bound away from her like a joey escaping the pouch (that’s the screaming like a banshee part) only to bound right back in again and make your heart swell in your chest with emotions that are truly beyond words. (That’s the endearing part.)

A child beginning to discover WHO they are is only the first half of the journey to individualism.  This part of the process takes a little less than two years to be completed.  During this period a child acquires language and learns to express himself.  Wailing like a banshee still occurs every now and again, but it is less often.  Children move from parallel play to cooperative play, and begin to make real friends. They potty train and become more and more independent. They are growing up.

By assisting them out of the pouch and helping them back in, we provide a safe and nurturing environment for this process to happen.

But this is only one half of the journey. The second half of the journey is about the world of imagination; the world where costumes are a part of everyday life, where invisible friends come to dinner, and fears stalk the bedroom after dark. 

Our concert theme in October is all about self identity, and how children go about becoming individuals. We will address the first half of this adventure through peek-a-boo play and hide and seek.  By identifying a child by his or her name we can help them to separate from us, and grow into strong individuals. (And if we do it in a song, it’s just more fun!)

We will also explore the importance of costumes, and the nature of fear, and some of the things that help children cope with those fears.  Unfortunately for us grownups, these fears are neither rational or reasonable, and certainly not logical! But having the tools to help our children deal with these upsets makes parenting much easier.

There is a musical focus as well, of course.  A perfect choice (if I do say so myself) for the spookiest night of the year: music in major and minor tonalities.  There will be some new instruments to meet – and a couple of familiar ones as well.

So, come back next week and I’ll talk about the second stage of the developmental process of building identity, and give you some more teasers about the show.

Tickets are available now here – so get them while you can!

-posted by Miss Allison, who is looking forward to seeing you at the symphony on October 31st!