We all know that opposites attract!

Did you know that children learn concepts best in opposites? It’s why in your Kindermusik class, you’ll learn fast/slow, smooth/bumpy, high/low, among many other pairs. It’s why in school, addition and subtraction are taught back to back. It’s why when you begin to drive, your teacher makes sure you know where both the brake and the gas pedals are!

Learning opposites enhances vocabulary and word association, encourages sensory and motor development, develops discrimination and classification skills, and provides plenty of opportunity for fun games. The farther apart the opposite (black and white, hard and soft), the easier it is for children to master the concept. When you add an interactive approach, this learning becomes highly enjoyable.

Here’s a few “opposite” activities:

When doing these, be sure to label the opposite words. (It’s pretty easy to forget to do that, as we adults already know the vocabulary!)

• Try tasting some opposite things like sweet sugar and sour lemon.
• Sort round cans and square boxes when putting away the groceries.
• Music is full of opposites. Put on your favorite piece of Kindermusik (or music with pitch or tempo variation), and move high and low, or fast and slow.
• Sing a song silly! (High and then low, or fast and then slow.)
• Move. Go and stop. Take big steps, and little steps. Go under, go over.
• Open and shut the doors. Or cupboards. Cause seriously, if they don’t learn both opening and shutting in a pair now, your fridge is going to constantly be left open when they are a bit older!
• Identify back or front. Left or right. Short and tall. Boy or girl. Young or old. Dirty or clean. Empty or full.
• Feel the objects around you. Hard or soft? Rough or smooth? Hot or cold?
• Read some opposite books, and talk about what you see. Here’s some favorites: Dinosaur Roar, by Paul and Henrietta Stickland. Big Dog, Little Dog, by P.D. Eastman. The Foot Book, by Dr. Seuss.

Even babies learn opposites. Talk to your baby as you go throughout the day, and emphasize the opposite words with your vocal inflection. “I’m going to pick you up.” “We are going down the stairs.”

Really, the possibilities are endless. Just have fun with it!

-posted by Miss Analiisa, whose two oldest children are oil and water.

Babies and toddlers enjoy blowing. As they practice blowing, they strengthen mouth muscles and develop awareness of their breathing, which will help their language development.

With preschoolers and early elementary, blowing develops their diaphragms and builds muscle control necessary for singing and wind instrument playing.

Blowing also helps children become aware of the fact that they can use breath to make a variety of sounds, move things, blow out candles, or create a cooling breeze.

Blowing for all ages
Blow kisses – even babies can do this!
Blow through a straw into your milk, juice or water.
Blow bubbles
Play a slide whistle or a harmonica (like the one in this semester’s Our Time)
Put a dab of watercolor or thinned tempura paint on a piece of paper. Blow on it with a straw and make beautiful designs.

For older children
Put a fluffy craft feather partially into the end of a drinking straw. Blow on the other end and see how far you can make the feather fly!
Place a ping pong ball on the table. With players on each side of the table, try to blow it off your opponent’s side with a drinking straw.
Whistle
Play a duck call or kazoo

-posted by Miss Analiisa, who wants you to breathe in through your nose, and blow out through your mouth three times right now. Don’t you feel calmer?

By the time I was in Junior High, my chores included cleaning, laundry (and ironing!), milking the goats, hauling wood for the fireplace, working in the garden, and cooking full meals for my family. Can you tell I grew up in a rural area?

As much as I really didn’t like all those chores, what I was really learning were life skills. Good life skills are what enabled me to move to New York City on my own at 18 and survive.  (Though I admit that the time I got on the wrong train and ended up at Flatbush Avenue instead of the Upper East Side and didn’t get mugged or worse was luck, though it was life skills that told me NOT to get off the train!)

My children have it way easier than I did (though I’m positive every parent says that). We live in the city (so nothing to milk), we have a house cleaner who comes once a week, and I rarely iron, let alone make my children do so.

As my oldest just turned 11, and is on the cusp of adolescence, I knew I had to really start thinking about the process of parenting with the goal of letting him go.  His frontal lobe (and therefore his ability to make decisions taking into account all the long-term consequences) won’t be fully developed until he is 25, but he’s going to be ready to fly the nest long before then. (I hope!)

Although I can’t control his brain maturity, I can help him to develop life skills – aka “chores”. As I made a list of the skills he should master, it was overwhelmingly long. So, I decided to pick 4 this year, working alongside him until he’s competent, and only then adding another.

Below I’ve made a list of some life skills that every child should know, divided by age range. It’s by no means exhaustive, but meant to be a jumping off point for you. As well, keep in mind that every child develops at a different rate, and yours may be able to master some skills earlier and some later. And that’s perfectly normal.

Toddlers
How to pick up toys
How to wash hands
How to get dressed
How to come when called
How to “freeze” when told to stop
How to make a bed in the morning

Preschoolers
How to set the table
How to stir and mix, how to cut with a blunt knife
How to take sheets off the bed
How to put sort dirty and clean laundry
How to put clean clothing away
How to take on and off shoes and coat (buttons, zipper, Velcro)
How to fold towels and washcloths

Early Elementary
How to take care of a pet
How to clean the bathroom
How to answer a phone call
How to put away clean dishes
How to help put groceries and the bags away
How to clear the table and rinse the dishes
How to write a thank you note

Mid-Late Elementary
How to load the dishwasher
How to do laundry
How to fold clothes
How to vacuum
How to change sheets on a bed
How to prepare simple recipes
How to sew on a button or mend a small tear

-posted by Miss Analiisa, who can truthfully say that she had to walk to the school bus in the snow UPHILL both ways!

In order to develop balance and stability, babies age 1-2 should practice walking in different directions and in different patterns. Non-walkers begin to develop the sense of balance by experiencing varied movements in a grown up’s arms.
 

For your walker, pull the car out of your garage. Take some sidewalk chalk and draw all sorts of different kinds of lines on the floor. Play follow the leader and have fun walking, running, jumping and tiptoeing on the lines. Be sure to change leaders, and let your child lead when he or she has the hang of the game. You’ll be surprised at how quickly your child will catch on.

-posted by Miss Analiisa, whose middle child Rob had a very clear preference to be held and rocked upside down when he was a baby. No small wonder he now is loving being a gymnast! 

Ever lost something and then thought “Hmm… I wonder where I put that?”  Well, now you and your child can have fun looking for the misplaced items.  Just change the words of this Our Time Away We Go song and instead of finding frustration, you and your child will find laughter and a good time looking for things.  

For example, the other day I just couldn’t find my purse, so I started sing “Where oh where did I put my purse? Where oh where did I put my purse?”  All of sudden, I remembered that I’d left it in the car, and I happily went out there singing “Found it, found it, here is my purse!”  Luckily, not too many neighbors were home at the time and they all know what I do for a living, so when I break out into song it doesn’t really faze them!

I love hearing that my Our Time classes have already started to enjoy this game at home too!  Even on the first day of class, one mommy came running back into class saying that her child was jingling her keys as they were leaving! 

Singing with your child not only helps build self-confidence, but it is a wonderful way to bond as well.  Just as in story reading, singing directly exposes the singers to patterns of language, including rhythm, speech sounds, syntax and rhyme.

For your older child, try singing a song and allowing your child to fill in the blanks. (“Twinkle, twinkle, little ________”.)  By doing this, you are developing her sense of inner hearing as related to pitch and melody. 

Singing a song in your mind is akin to thinking up a story or making a plan without speaking out loud.  Remembering the sequence adds an additional level of complexity.  All these are vital life skills.

-posted by Miss Beth, who happily sings at any chance she gets…..including the grocery store when looking for the bread!

It’s Our Time to drive in our cars
It’s Our Time to play the jingle bells
It’s Our Time to snuggle together

Every time children and caregivers in Our Time come into the classroom, they are greeted with their peers and a fun activity at Gathering Time. Maybe it’s puzzles, blocks, or builders. When the teacher sings the toys away, the children know that when the sticks come out, it’s time to sing hello. They’ll get to tap, thunk, scrape, click, and roll hello to each other. Then they’ll sing about their day with the bars, bounce on their grown-ups laps, play instruments, dance, and in my classes, we always end with a snuggle.

This is a part of a routine that children learn and look forward to every week. But why do we work so hard in Kindermusik to build this routine?

 In short, optimal learning for a child happens in a classroom where he feels most comfortable. Think back to one of your best educational experiences. It could be a wacky funny teacher you had in high school, or a fun environment at work with people you enjoy being with.  Do you remember how comfortable it felt to be in that place on a regular basis? How much did you learn when you were there? 

For me, it was my course at UW in early childhood social/emotional behavior. Every time I walked into that classroom, I was greeted warmly by my professor, Gail Joseph, and was delighted to see what sort of snacks she brought for us. It was “food for thought”. J I always knew what to expect and that made me feel comfortable and happy to be there. Looking back on that experience, I realized that I retained more from that class than almost any other at UW. And now I use what I learned there in my professional life every day.

In Our Time, children develop this same comfort when they learn a good sense of self-esteem from the familiarity of their environment.  They know that after the sticks are put away, they get out the bars. When the bars come out, the teacher sings to them what will happen in class. The best part is, when we sing about cars, jingle bells, and snuggling, we actually do those activities in class. That may sound like a simple concept, but try and think about all those checklists you’ve made, either mental or on paper, and how good it feels to check those items off when you complete them. Children get to make their checklist when they sing with the bars every day in Our Time.

You may have your own way of building a routine at home with your child. Maybe you both sit down at breakfast and go over what will happen in your day. Maybe you and your child draw a picture together to go over the fun things you did. The more ways you can discuss and recap a routine with your child, the better.  Not only does this bring them immense joy and self-esteem to know that their expectations are being fulfilled, but it helps them to build memory retention.

 Quite often, a toddler will look out the window and see that it’s raining. Then they’ll go outside, feel the rain, and go back in and say “Mommy, I need a coat.” She won’t see the rain and connect that she needs a coat right away until she builds a temporal sense of cause and effect. Routines are one of the best ways to build this skill.

This developing sense of routine is one of the many reasons why Kindermusik is so beneficial for a child’s development. And it’s important to provide for our children a consistent learning environment. In fact, some children are still developing their sense of the classroom routine in the second or third semester.  So every day when you come in with your child and bounce, sing, dance, and play, know that it is just another vital component to your child’s learning.

-posted by Teacher Aaron, who looks forward to his routine everyday!