Studio3Music Blog

Posts Tagged ‘sensory systems’

Nov
25

Searching for the predictable patterns in a topsy-turvy world.

Natalie is my 6 (and 11/12^ths she insists on adding) year old first grader. This being my third time around teaching 1^st grade, I’ve come to the solid conclusion that early learning centers around patterns, and that children who are unable to understand patterns aren’t going to advance very far in reading, writing, or math, not to mention music.

photo credit: monteregina via photopin cc

That makes sense, because we know that the job of your child’s brain from birth to 7 is to organize all the sensory input it receives. At about the age of 7, brains are ready and eager to learn (If their brains have been able to properly learn to process the sensory information. If not – these are the kids we consider on the “sensory scale”).

So it’s no surprise in the early elementary years that most learning is based on patterns. Patterns of number combinations, patterns to pencil strokes in handwriting, patterns to learning adverbs, patterns to sounding out letter combinations.

photo credit: Adam Foster | Codefor via photopin cc

But before they are Kindergartners and First Graders, babies and small children alike enjoy patterned activities. Their brains actually crave them.
Simple games that are predictable and have an element of anticipation, as well as stop and go songs help your child remember, recognize, and anticipate specific patterns in sounds, words, and songs. These first steps of pattern recognition will lead toward understanding more difficult patterns in areas such as math, literacy, and music.

photo credit: cobalt123 via photopin cc

We’ve collected some of our favorite stop and go or highly predictable songs, with download links for the ones you might not know or haven’t had in Kindermusik class yet. I probably don’t have to tell your children what to do with them. They listen for the “stop” and stop, and learn to anticipate the “go”, whether dancing, swishing scarves, or playing instruments. (Weekend craft project – homemade shakers and drums!)

Listen, Listen
I am a Clown
Riding in the Buggy
Shake Your Eggs
Move and Freeze
Bells are Ringing (find some thing to make noise with – keys, spoons, hands – and make up new words. Pause each time after “listen to them jingling/tapping/clapping” before you jingle, tap, or clap)
Walk and Stop
In the City
Aiken Drum (when you sing this, put a “freeze” after every time you sing “moon”)
Stop on a Dot
Giddy up Horsey
B-I-N-G-O

Games like Red Light, Green Light and all sorts of Knock-Knock jokes are great, too.

If you have older children, then clapping games like Who Stole the Cookies from the Cookie Jar, and A Sailor Went to Sea, Sea, Sea are all about patterns, as is the classic string game Cat’s Cradle.

photo credit: Nemodus photos via photopin cc

So, this rainy Seattle Thanksgiving weekend, when the tryptophan-laden turkey has the grownups sleepy, but has had no effect on the children, load your iPod with stop and go music, shut the door, and let them have at it. They’ll have no idea they are getting a brain workout, while you are getting a nap.

-posted by Miss Analiisa, who prefers stop and collapse music at the end of a busy Thanksgiving Day.

Tags: brain, games, kindermusik, learning, Miss Analiisa, sensory systems, Things to do

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Dec
5

Making a Mess

Posted in Child Development, Education, Things to do

I really like the dance we do this time of year called Fum, Fum, Fum! The babies in class love all the sensory input – watching the swishing scarves, moving through the dance, and hearing the music. The more your little one has opportunity to experience activities through all senses, the stronger and more permanent learning will be.

In Spring and Summer, the outside world is chock full of colors, smells, tastes, sounds, and things to touch. By this time of year, socks and shoes are back on, mittens cover little fingers, and hats muffle noises.

Did you know that together, hands and feet have over 40,000 touch receptors? Pull off those socks and mittens and take advantage of those 40,000 learning possibilities! Here are some ideas:

Note: All of these work equally well for hands or feet. A tablecloth/oilcloth on the floor or bathtub work well for the feet activities, and a highchair tray or wax paper on a table is a perfect place to contain the mess made by experimenting little hands. Be sure to talk about what your little one is “feeling” (slippery, soft, rough, smooth, scratchy, bumpy).

Squirt shaving cream or whipped cream onto feet, or in little mounds on a high chair tray for exploration.
Put dried beans or breakfast cereal in a box or plastic tub. Place packing peanuts or crumpled paper in the other box. Let your little one stomp and jump and kick away. (With your help, a non-walker can do this, too.)
Make a box of ribbon and fabric scraps of various textures (satin, grosgrain, fleece, burlap, vinyl) for exploration.
Take those ribbons and scraps of fabric, add some cotton balls, and put them on floor for your little one to crawl or walk across.
Cook noodles, oatmeal, rice or jello. Name the different textures as you play with them.
Mix cornstarch and water until you get a goop about the consistency of glue. Add food coloring if you wish. This is a non-toxic mixture, so no worries if a little bit gets eaten.

This is not the time to try and contain the mess! Frequently, the messier the experience, the more is learned. Think about it – the more touch receptors (and other senses) that are involved, the stronger and more permanent the learning will be.

-posted by Miss Analiisa, whose favourite sensory activity involves sand between her toes.

Tags: babies, brain, language development, Miss Analiisa, sensory systems, toddlers, touch

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Jul
21

The Arts Develop Smarts!

Posted in Child Development, Education, Music and the brain

Over the next several days, take some time to observe your children (or someone else’s) at play. Notice how many times singing, dancing, coloring, creating, music making, drawing, sculpting (think play dough) occurs. All of these activities are natural forms of art.

I love how Wikipedia defines art: “Art is the product or process of deliberately arranging items in a way that influences and affects one or more of the senses, emotions and intellect.”

That definition totally fits with what we know about brain development from birth to 7. During this period, the brain’s entire job is to organize information (deliberately arrange items) it receives from all the senses (sight, sound, taste, touch, smell, vestibular, proprioceptive), and then learn what to do with that info.

Every time a child has a sensory experience and the brain processes (organizes) the input, neural networks are formed. Your child chooses to engage in the arts during play because he or she instinctively knows the arts are the best way to develop the brain.

As a side note, these networks are largely completed by the age of 5, and after the age of 8, neural pathways that aren’t well traveled are pruned away. (Which is why children who learn a second language during the preschool years speak like natives, and most of us who didn’t take Spanish until high school will always sound like, well…embarrassing.)

Okay. Back to the arts. Arts, especially music, help wire the brain for the kind of learning that occurs in school after the age of seven.

The Encyclopedia Britannica says that art is “the use of skill and imagination in the creation of aesthetic objects, environments, or experiences that can be shared with others.” Sharing the arts (group dances, playing instruments in ensemble, working together on a painting) enhances social skills.

The arts also develop essential thinking tools such as perception, attention, symbolic thinking, self-regulation, pattern recognition, reasoning, intuition, memory, differentiation, manipulation, encoding and decoding. Lots of big concepts, but what does this all translate to?

Your child’s painting and dancing and sculpting and especially music making in the preschool years, is the best thing you can do now to help your child later become an avid reader, a lover of math, a self-confident teenager, a curious chemist, a successful entrepreneur, and, of course, an accomplished musician.

-posted by Miss Analiisa, who suggests taking inventory of your art baskets and music making and creating supplies this summer, and making sure they well stocked.

Tags: babies, brain, dancing, learning, Miss Analiisa, music, preschoolers, sensory systems

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Jun
20

The Nature Smart and Body Smart Child

Posted in Child Development, Education, parenting, Things to do

This is the final blog in the series about making the “Multiple Intelligences Theory” practical. One of the things that I like about Howard Gardner’s ideas is that although our society tends to associate intelligence with word-smart and language-smart people, others shouldn’t be valued any less. They are intelligent, too.

This world would be a pretty dull place without the musicians, gardeners, scientists, actors, teachers, therapists, movie producers, artists, architects, dancers, sculptors, lawyers, archeologists and athletes.

Naturalist Intelligence (Nature Smart):

Nature smart children (as you might guess), feel a special affinity with nature, and love to explore and learn about the environment – from animals to cloud formations. They prefer to be out of doors, doing activities like boating, hiking and camping. From a very early age they prefer television shows about nature or animals. They probably will beg you for a pet. Or three.

These children are good at organizing and cataloging the information from their natural surroundings, and you might expect them to come home with pockets full of rocks, shells, bugs, and plants, and know what they all are! Nature smart children have keen senses (sight, smell, taste, touch and hearing) which allow them to be aware of subtle changes and details in their environment.

If you have a nature smart child, they might grow up to be a gardener, biologist, archeologist, chef, farmer, geologist or even an FBI agent in a crime lab.

How to Encourage Your Nature Smart Child:

outside walks and hikes (take a guided tour of a local arboretum or botanical garden)
create a nature scrapbook with photos, drawings, pressed flowers, etc.
vegetable and flower gardening
take care of animals
collect and observe nature with a microscope or magnifying glass
stargazing
DVD Series like The BBC’s Planet Earth and The Seas of Life or Atlas of the Natural World
visit the zoo, aquarium or a natural history museum
building – volcano, terrarium, bird feeder

Bodily-Kinesthetic Intelligence (Body Smart):

These children have the ability to skillfully manipulate both physical objects and their bodies. They have a good sense of timing and eye-hand coordination, and developed physical skills become like reflexes. Body smart children excel in activities like sports, dance and acting. They will likely frequently ask you to take them to the playground. They have a lot of energy, and don’t seem to sit still for long.

Body smart children have good fine and gross motor skills, and enjoy building as well as taking things apart and putting them back together. They learn by doing, rather than hearing or seeing. These children enjoy tactile experiences such as sand, water and play dough.

When they grow up, a body smart child might become an actor, sculptor, builder, dancer, pilot, athlete, surgeon, craftsperson, emergency worker or soldier.

How to Encourage Your Body Smart Child:

obstacle courses
hands on crafts – clay, finger painting, cutting with scissors, beading, tracing, knitting, sidewalk chalk
learn sign language
messy activities – cooking, gardening, building sandcastles, mud pies, water balloon fights
active games, both competitive and cooperative
skits and puppet shows
build small models or larger structures in your backyard
draw letters, shapes or simple pictures on each others’ backs and guess what it is
dancing

-posted by Miss Analiisa, who now appreciates even more the wonderful ways were are individually created.

Tags: Miss Analiisa, parenting, physical development, science, sensory systems, Things to do

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Apr
19

I found my hands. Let’s play some games!

Posted in Child Development, Games for Babies, parenting, Things to do

Classic "Airplane Baby"

4 to 6 months
One of the biggest changes that will occur during these months is that the parts of your baby’s brain that coordinate sight and touch are now integrating the incoming sensory information. This enables your baby to figure out where her hands are in space (thanks to the proprioceptive system), and make them do what she wants.

With the beginnings of depth-perception, this sight/touch sensory integration means he can reach for an object and pick it up. By about 6 months, he is also able to rotate his wrists, and thus manipulate objects.

What to watch for: These are the signs that your baby’s brain is organizing sensory input exactly as it should.

Banging objects and toys. (Against the floor, or two objects together.)
Spontaneous bringing together in a clapping motion of her hands in front of her body. This is the first sign of coordination between both sides of her body. To assist in this developmental milestone, you can play clapping games with your baby even before she can play them by herself.

Ram Sam Sam is a children’s song that originated in Morocco, and was a favorite clapping game of my children when they were infants and toddlers, especially on the changing table. You can listen to the song here, 2-22 A Ram Sam Sam and download it directly at play.kindermusik.com.

A ram sam sam, a ram sam sam (clap your baby’s hands or feet together as you sing)
Guli guli guli guli guli (roll your baby’s hands or bicycle his legs)
ram sam sam (clap your baby’s hands or feet together as you sing)
A ram sam sam, a ram sam sam (clap your baby’s hands or feet together as you sing)
Guli guli guli guli guli (roll your baby’s hands or bicycle his legs)
ram sam sam (clap your baby’s hands or feet together as you sing)
A ra-vi, a ra-vi (lift your baby’s arms over his head, or fold his legs up toward his head)
Guli guli guli guli guli (roll your baby’s hands or bicycle his legs)
ram sam sam (clap your baby’s hands or feet together as you sing)
A ra-vi, a ra-vi (lift your baby’s arms over his head, or fold his legs up toward his head)
Guli guli guli guli guli (roll your baby’s hands or bicycle his legs)
ram sam sam (clap your baby’s hands or feet together as you sing)

Touch Me
As babies begin to coordinate sight and touch, they delight in “touching” games. Here’s a fun naming game to play. (And yes, babies can begin to learn body part labels, even if they can’t yet speak the words!) I found many versions of the lyrics brought to the US by immigrants from all over Europe. Many people commented that this was a beloved touch game played with grandparents, even at 4 or 5 years of age. Here are a couple of versions:

Here is where the coachman sits (touch baby’s forehead)
Here is where he cracks his whip (touch bridge of nose)
Eye winker (touch or circle one eye)
Tom tinker (touch or circle the other eye)
Nose breather (touch nose)
Mouth eater (touch mouth)
Chin chopper (touch chin)
Gully, gully, gully (tickle under chin)

Here sits the Lord Mayor (touch baby’s forehead)
Here sits his two men (touch eyes)
Here sits the rooster (touch cheek)
Here sits the hen (touch other cheek)
Here sits the chickens (touch nose)
Here they run in (touch mouth)
Chin-chopper, chin-chopper,
Chin-chopper, chin! (tickle under chin)

Airplane Baby
At about 6 months, a baby on his tummy really feels the pull of gravity, which gives baby a strong desire to lift up his head, neck, upper back, arms and legs all at the same time, resulting in the classic “airplane” position.

Babies at this age want and need to have their vestibular systems stimulated by rocking, swooshing, twirling, swinging and other similar movements. One word of caution – every person (grownups, too!) has a level of moment they can tolerate, and it’s different for everyone. If your baby begins to cry during a moving game, this means that the play has become too rough or wild for your baby’s vestibular system to handle, and the level of play is actually causing her brain to disorganize.

Hold your baby firmly around her body, tummy down, in a horizontal position. Take off! Fly your baby around the room, swooshing, dipping, spinning, rolling, starting, stopping as it pleases your baby. Be sure to make airplane sounds! If you would like some musical inspiration, download Run and Jump/Soaring from play.kindermusik.com.

As your baby turns into a toddler and preschooler, lie on your back on the floor and bend your knees with your feet off the floor. Have your child place his tummy against the bottoms of your feet. Hold onto your child’s hands. Lift your child up towards the ceiling as you raise your feet and fly!

-posted by Miss Analiisa, whose 9 year old Rob would love to still play airplane on her feet, but at 86 pounds, would likely crush the lift-off mechanism.