My sister finds it annoying. I find it hilarious. Of course, I’ve been-there done-that three times, and it’s been five years since one of mine played that game. Because I’m the auntie, I can call it cute and be glad I’m no longer scraping food off the walls.

What this all means is that 11 month old Macie has moved from the this-is-all-about-picking-things-up stage, to the what-will-happen-if-I, what-does-it-feel-like, what-noise-does-it-make stage.

But let’s back up a moment. I’ve got to get you caught up. These fine motor skills began at about 2 to 4 months of age, when she inaccurately swiped at objects. Sometime after 3 months, she could hold small objects in her hand, and within a couple of months, could transfer those objects between her hands. Between 5 and 9 months Macie could first rake at objects with her whole hand to pick them up, and then moved on to picking up small objects using her thumb and index finger. We call this a pincer grasp.

She’ll use this grasp to string beads, close a Ziploc bag, color, hold her glockenspiel mallets in Kindermusik Young Child, build Lego creations, and cut with scissors.

As Macie’s grasp became more precise, she explored objects by moving, twisting, turning and shaking them. Now at almost a year, she’s just about ready for my favorite classic of baby toys – the Tupperware shape sorter, which combines the rotating, moving and flipping skills she learned earlier, which a little cognitive thinking.

When she first learned to sit, Macie would prop herself up on one arm, and explore her playthings with one hand and her mouth. As she learned sit without help, both hands became free to be used to answer her questions about the shape, texture, size, hardness, and weight of objects. She’s using her mouth less (though a lot of children remain really oral for a couple of years, and that’s perfectly okay).

Which brings us back to the cup throwing. And the banging, shaking, squeezing, tapping, twisting and flinging. Is my sister annoyed? You betcha. Her living room floor currently looks like a tornado hit it. So does Macie’s room. And the dining room. And sometimes even the bathroom. (And even the hallway, which occasionally gets mummified by an unwound roll of toilet paper.

But rather than get angry when our babes make a mess, keep this in mind: You already know what a balloon does when you kick it, what noise a cup makes when you throw it, just how fast you can unwind toilet paper (and how long it is!), how scratchy brush bristles feel on your skin – but your little one doesn’t. Someone, long ago, let you taste, touch, feel and manipulate objects. And then helped you learn how to pick up your tornado.

­-posted by Miss Analiisa, who suggests you make an ever-changing sensory box filled with varied objects like a sponge, a wooden spoon, a rock, a piece of sandpaper, a feather duster, and egg shaker, a pan lid, a real flower, a jingle bell stick and a stuffed animal for you to explore together.

You see, my morning tea is supposed to be sipped slowly while sitting at the dining room table reading the celebrity gossip, err… news on my iPad. No rushing allowed. Without my tea, I was seriously out of sorts all morning long. (And it wasn’t the lack of caffeine; I only have one cup.)

If you’re not a morning beverage have-to drinker, perhaps you’ve sat down to watch your favorite TV show, and discovered it was on hiatus? Bet you turned into cranky pants. We grown-ups grow accustomed to our routines and rituals, and it can be aggravating and unsettling to be jolted out of them!

We’re born with a need for routine and ritual. Predictability is important to an infant, a toddler, a pre-schooler, a jr. higher, and adults. We like to know what comes next. It brings us comfort and security and makes us feel like we are in control of our circumstances.

Routines are the tasks or chores we regularly do. They are the typical or everyday activities that have little afterthought. Your workplace has a typical routine. (Think about what you do in your job, or what are the normal procedures you follow without really thinking about them.) I do laundry on Fridays, always lock the door when I leave the house, and start with long tones when I practice my Euphonium.

Your children need routines, too. In Kindermusik, we always start with the hello song and end with the goodbye song. Routines in the classroom allow children to feel safe and secure, and then learning can happen naturally.
Routines help babies solidify their eating and sleeping patters; routine transitions and rituals help preschoolers feel in control, and knowing what to expect enables them to act independently.

There is an interesting difference between routines and rituals. According to Stedman’s Medical Dictionary, a ritual is a detailed act or series of acts carried out by an individual to relieve anxiety or to forestall the development of anxiety.

That makes perfect sense. My morning tea ritual gives me a moment of peace before I enter the hectic pace of my day. It grounds me. The routine of the hello and goodbye song in a Kindermusik class becomes a ritual when we sing the same song each week. The familiarity and consistency of these songs lets the children know what’s coming, and so they eagerly ready themselves for fun and learning.

Rituals and routines shape a child’s behavior and development in a stable, secure and loving manner. Think bath time, cleanup time, bed time, family nights, Sunday morning waffles, summer vacations to the lake.  There is no shortage of research to suggest that routines and rituals are vitally important to the well-being and positive mental health of any child.

We can never underestimate the affect of the emotional imprint of loving routines and rituals in a child’s life, and the positive feelings they evoke in years to come. There is no shortage of research to suggest that routines and rituals are vitally important to the well-being and positive mental health of any child. What are some of your favorite memories of childhood? They likely involve a ritual or routine, which you may have repeated with your own family.

-posted by Miss Analiisa, who now knows that her morning cup of tea is not really about the caffeine; it emotionally prepares her to face the day. So, drink up!

Image: Ambro / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

There are two parts to self-control. The first is inhibitory control, which is the ability to stop what you are doing and wait. (The other part is impulse control, which is the ability to stop an idea or thought from becoming an action.) But as inhibitory control develops first, we’ll begin there.

In class, we’ve been playing with a chant called Giddy Up Horsey. You can do this at home, too. Put your child on your lap on the floor, and say this chant and as you bounce:

Giddy up horsey, giddy up horsey, giddy up horsey, go, go, go! Bounce your child up and down.

Giddy, up horsey, giddy up horsey, giddy up horsey WHOA!! When you get to the whoa, stop bouncing, and lean back with your child and stop. Wait quietly for a moment. Keep repeating the whole thing until the giggles subside.

Then in class, we’ve been getting up and riding stick horses around to the same chant, stopping our ponies and waiting to be told to “go” again, (the inhibitory control part) after the whoa.

Miss Allison had an interesting observation this week. She said that because the grownups were in charge of the child’s body during the bounce, they were showing the children how to control their bodies (how to stop at the appropriate time). The grownups were teaching the children the pattern and the how of the going, stopping, and waiting.

When the children got up on the stick horses, they were more ready and able to control their own bodies. They were familiar with the pattern, and could anticipate the whoa. Miss Allison said that in classes that did the bounce first, before the pony riding, the children had a much higher success rate of demonstrating inhibitory control when in charge of their bodies during the pony ride, than the ones who just did the ride.

That fits with what we always say – You are your child’s first and best teacher.

So, do a little bouncing this week. And keep your eye on the blog. I’ve got an idea about how to make a really adorable stick pony to practice the riding and stopping and waiting (cleverly disguised inhibitory control practice). I just need to get the idea out of my head and take some pictures of the process. I promise – under $5 and NO sewing!

Oh, I almost forgot. For a fun stop and go game at home or in the car, check out this cute idea.

-posted by Miss Analiisa, who will practice some pony riding every time she’s having difficulty practicing either inhibitory or impulse control around that Godiva sea salt dark chocolate.

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.

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?

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!

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!

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. 

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.

At some point this summer, while the rest of you were thinking of suntans and beaches and nothing to do with school, Miss Allison, Miss Stacey, Michael, Chadd and I were knee deep in snow, sheep and the sea!

We’re totally tickled to be bringing you 4 concerts this year, including an all new holiday show.

All concerts sold out weeks in advance last season, so purchase your tickets early by clicking on the concert titles below. Season tickets (does not include the Holiday Show) for the 9:30 performances are here, and the 10:30 here.

Holiday Symphony Serenade

• Saturday December 10, 2011 – 9:30 and 10:30

An ALL NEW show! It’s a delightful collection of your favorite holiday things all on one stage, including the 8 days of Hanukkah and a jazz trio! Come hear holiday music from all over the world, bounce, sing, play and move.

A Birthday Party For Mozart

• Saturday January 21, 2012 – 9:30 and 10:30

Mozart is turning 4 years old, and you’re invited to his party! Come explore the delightful world of Mozart’s music, from his point of view. Watch what happens when he doesn’t get the musical present he really wanted. As always, we’ll have a singalong musical story and invite you to snuggle up to a lullaby.

A Little Barn Moo-sic

• Saturday March 17, 2012, 9:30 and 10:30

Miss Allison, her musical friends, and the Story Fairy welcome you to the cacophony of the barnyard! It’s time to for some classical pastoral moosic. Sing a funny sheepish story, and meet a wise old owl. You’ll even hear instruments that sound like animals.

Swing Me Up and Swing Me Down

• Saturday May 12, 2011 – 9:30 and 10:30

In this action-packed concert, we will be using music to teach the concepts of high and low. We’ll meet the members of the brass family, play high and low games, sing a terrific story about some ocean friends. With Mother’s Day just around the corner, we recommend bringing your favorite Mommy to the show!

-posted by the Story Fairy, who is wondering how she can turn a barnyard full of animals into a headpiece.