Studio3Music Blog

Posts Tagged ‘toddlers’

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.

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Oct
30

Cornflake Trees and Snowy Owls

Posted in Family, Things to do

Let me introduce to you our youngest blogger, Adrian Owen K. He doesn’t know he’s a celebrity yet, though.  He is a Kindermusik rock star, of course! He’s just 7 (almost 8!) years old, and is in his last year of Kindermusik. If my memory serves me right, he’s been with us since babyhood.

Anyway, he asked his momma to send us this poem he’s been reciting (and teaching to his younger brother, Patrick).

“Autumn”, by Thelma Ireland

Cornflake leaves
Beneath the trees,
Are they a breakfast
For the breeze?

I was inspired to find a cornflake craft, and lo and behold – here you go.

Project list
1 piece brown construction paper
1 piece light blue construction paper
pencil
marker
scissors
liquid glue (not a glue stick)
1 small hand and arm (firmly attached to a small child)

  1. On the brown paper, trace around the child’s hand (fingers spread out) and lower arm. Cut out the tracing.
  2. Crumple up the paper to add tree trunk texture, and then smooth the paper out. Your child might be completely horrified that you are doing this to their beautiful hand and arm cutout, so if that becomes a problem, just skip it.
  3. Glue the “tree” to the light blue paper, leaving room to write the poem.
  4. Write the poem on the paper.
  5. Glue cornflake leaves onto the branches and ground.
  6. Now, hang display your child’s creation, and learn the poem together.

Owen also, (and rightly so) asked his momma to include this second cute little ditty.

“Mr. Owl”, by Edna Hamilton

I saw an owl up in a tree,
I looked at him, he looked at me.
I couldn’t tell you of his size,
For all I saw were two big eyes.
As soon as I could make a dash,
Straight home I ran, quick as a flash.

Of course this poem needs a cute craft as well.

Project list
a pinecone (Go take a walk in the park or woods to find one.)
cotton balls
googly eyes
felt
scissors
glue

  1. Stretch or unroll the cotton balls.
  2. Pull the cotton all over the pinecone. (It shouldn’t need any glue.)
  3. From the felt, cut out a triangle for a beak, and round circles for the eyes.
  4. Glue googly eyes on top of the felt circles.
  5. Glue the eyes and beak to your Snowy Owl.
  6. Make an owl family. (Because he’ll be lonely if you don’t.)
  7. Learn the poem together.

Now, have a gallery showing and recitation to adoring fans. Don’t forget to serve dessert!

Thanks, Adrian Owen K.!

-posted by Miss Analiisa, who made her wonderful husband Karl go to the store at 9:30 at night to get cornflakes (which nobody eats around here), so she could make this craft and take pictures for you! Anyone want the rest of the box?

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Oct
2

Why? How come? What’s next? Can I? What would happen if?

Posted in Child Development, Education, Imagine That, Things to do

Do you hear those questions at home? We hear them in Kindermusik Imagine That classes all the time! Your child is a discoverer, and loves comparing and categorizing things, conducting investigations, problem solving, and most of all, talking about what they learn from exercising their curiosity.

The things your preschooler naturally wants to do will boost their cognitive development – the growing of thinking skills, including problem solving and decision making. Cognitive development is not about the acquisition of information, though that might occur in the process.

What’s important about helping your child acquire cognitive skills now in the preschool years is that this aptitude can then be transferred to any other learning experiences in their life.  For instance, take puzzles. There is a lot of thinking involved in completing a jigsaw puzzle. Sorting, organizing, categorizing, visual discrimination, remembering (Where did I see that piece I now need?), a plan of action (Do I do the outside or the inside first?)

Now fast forward 30 years. Your preschooler has become a successful research scientist. And puzzles have helped her become so. She learned the scientific method as a child. She observed the puzzle, she hypothesized how to solve the puzzle, she tested her solution and concluded if her solution worked!

All mistakes or problems are really opportunities for cognitive development. Here’s why: Children thrive on routine and familiarity. When something happens that thwarts their “normal”, they are required to come up with a solution that is outside of their box, and in doing so, cognitive development occurs.

Take the proverbial spilled milk. Your child dropped his cup of milk. You could get mad (especially if you just cleaned your kitchen floor), but don’t. Remember – all mistakes or problems are really opportunities for cognitive development.

Ask your child to look at the spill – Wow! That little mug of milk sure spread out all over the floor. Is the puddle going to keep growing, or stop? Is it a deep puddle? How can you tell? What should we do about all this milk on the floor? Oh, clean it up? How? What should we use to do that? Milk gets sticky when it’s dried, because it has a kind of sugar in it. What do you think could put on our washcloth to get the sticky off the floor? Why do you think you dropped the cup? How can you hold the cup differently next time so it doesn’t spill? Observing, hypothesizing, testing and concluding!

Here is a list of 10 cognitive skill-building activities to do with your child.

  1. Play Hot and Cold. Hide an object and give your child clues as to where it is by saying hotter, colder, or warmer.
  2. Games like Dominoes, Uno, Skip Bo or Battleship
  3. Cooking. Let your child mix, pour, etc. Lots of mistakes or problems can occur to solve in this activity. (Just ask professional chefs.)
  4. Play I Spy with shapes, colors, textures, etc.
  5. Household chores like sorting laundry or putting away silverware.
  6. Ask (sometimes very silly) thinking questions. Is an elephant purple?  Which is bigger – our cat or our dog? What did you eat for dinner last night?
  7. With your finger, draw a simple shape or picture on your child’s back. See if they can guess what it is. Give clues if necessary. (It’s something you find outside. It is very tall.)
  8. Category games. What doesn’t belong – cat, mouse, frog, tree? Find me 3 things that are yellow.
  9. Create an obstacle course.
  10. Let them make mistakes and then allow them to figure out how to solve them.

 -posted by Miss Analiisa, who thinks she’s pretty cognitively savvy, until she plays the game Gobblet Gobblers with her children and loses!

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Sep
15

A Helping of Music Outside the Home

Posted in Family, Things to do

While music can greatly enhance a plain ‘ol day at home, plenty of community music events happen away from the home worth venturing out for. They are often affordable, if not free!

Here are a few ideas to stimulate our thinking about finding music events outside-the-home in our communities.

Kindermusik classes are outstanding once-a-week classes that provide your child with a musical experience with “home-work” (really, “home-play”) and resources (CD’s, musical instruments, books and activity guides) to keep music a focus of your child’s life all week long.

Libraries usually provides a few concerts for kids throughout the year.  In addition, the library has the information about what other concerts and music events are happening in the area. Asking questions will get us plugged into the resources for our music quest.

Public schools perform throughout the year.  The high school concerts can be good enough quality and the musical selections are most often classics. Another benefit is that kids get to see kids performing, giving them a vision for their own musical involvement.

Community colleges also have concerts open to the public that are free or low cost, usually with an increase in quality as the students are older.

Churches have been a harbinger of great music for centuries. Today many churches are still active music venues.  Not only do they often have their own semi-professional choirs or bands, but they often invite other performers in for special concerts.  Around the holidays, churches are the best place to find free musical events to attend or to be involved in. Special Christmas choirs welcome children.  Some churches offer free or low cost musical lessons.  The internet can help us search for these opportunities locally.

Local symphonies commonly offer student ticket rates or special children’s events.  These folks know that their survival depends on the next generation falling in love with classical music.  As a community organization, their goal is to get their music out to the public, not be exclusive. So ask for a discount or scholarship if needed!

Bookstores like Third Place Books and Barnes and Nobles offer free musical events all year long.  During long winter days, these concerts can save the day.  Their schedules are often posted or printed for busy parents to take along, or available on the internet.

Summer concert series are just about done for the season.  In most communities, we can find a free outdoor concert at least one day of the week, if not more.  My friend’s community combined their concerts with the farmers markets.  Any place people gather in the summer, people are likely to include music.

With a little planning, our kids can have a rich musical experience.  Such a variety is available whether we’re investing big money, or living on a shoestring in a down economy. Our children’s lives can be enriched as we dish up a good serving of music daily, whether at home or outside.

-posted by Donna Detweiler, who is encouraged that a child’s musical diet doesn’t need to be skimpy even in lean economic times!

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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. 

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