We Love Kindermusik Photo Slideshow:
We Love Kindermusik Video
Celebrate We Love Kindermusik week with all Kindermusik educators & children. See some of our community below!
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exbOByiFtMo&context=C3229ac6ADOEgsToPDskKlO2Eiy4jnX15O78vWuD8w&h=320&w=480[/youtube]
Dare to Share Why YOU Love Kindermusik
There’s no doubt about it – today’s technology has made many aspects of our lives much easier, especially our ability to share experiences. From Instagram to Facebook to Skype, you can share nearly anything online.
This month Kindermusik educators all around the world will celebrate “We Love Kindermusik Week” from February 10 – 16.
To help facilitate the sharing of what we all love about Kindermusik, Kindermusik International just announced a “We Love Kindermusik” contest where you and your Kindermusik educator could win some pretty fantastic prizes!
All Kindermusik kids and their parents have to do to enter is share why they love their Kindermusik educator and experience! The contest is open February 3-16, 2013 (midnight EST). Winner will be selected at random.
The lucky winning Kindermusik kid and their parent will receive:
- iPad with retina display, Wi-Fi and 32GB {perfect to use with Kindermusik@Home}
- 1 Year of Kindermusik@Home access
- $500 to charity of choice
When you win, your Kindermusik Educator also wins!
- iPad {with retina display, Wi-Fi and 32GB – perfect to use in class!}
- $500 of Kindermusik@Home credits {to assign to parents & kids at their studio}.
Enter the We Love Kindermusik Contest
All you have to do to enter is…
Step 1: Click Here.
Step 2: Tell us why you love Kindermusik.
Fine print: We will randomly select one valid entry as the winner, and that entrant’s educator will win the educator Grand Prize. If the entrant has an inactive educator, or for any other reason is not associated with an educator, we will do a random drawing for the educator prize using the currently active list of licensed educators.
The BBC on Why Birds Sing
"Inspired by musician and eco-philosopher David Rothenberg’s book of the same title, this documentary explores the intriguing, charming, complex and often conflicting theories on why birds sing like they do and why humans are so attracted to the sound.
"The film features contributions from musicians including Laurie Anderson, Jarvis Cocker and Beth Orton; enlightening and often startling analysis from some of the world’s most eminent birdsong scientists; a literary guide
to birdsong in poetry; a bizarre birdsong-themed art ‘happening’; the creation of a new musical composition from the Afro-Celt Sound System, entirely made up of manipulated birdsongs; and a strange musical duet at New York’s Bronx Aviary, featuring humans and birds.
"Filmed in the forests, aviaries, studios and laboratories of England, Germany and the USA, this is a colourful, entertaining, informative and occasionally weird journey through the songs of nature that have enchanted and perplexed humans for thousands of years."
Do you love to sing? Ask today about using Kindermusik to help more families sing together – for the joy of it.
- Sign-up to become a Kindermusik Educator
- Learn more about Teaching Kindermusik
- Get info on Starting Your Own Kindermusik Program
Daycare teachers promote early literacy skills with music
If Shakespeare had developed daycare or preschool curriculum instead of sonnets and plays, he may have rewritten one of his most famous lines: “If music be the food of love literacy, play on.” Research continues to prove this sentiment, including a new University of Buffalo study published earlier this month.
Training equips preschool teachers to use music
Before conducting this study, professors from the University of Buffalo knew what the research said about music’s ability to greatly impact a child’s early literacy and language abilities. With their study, however, they specifically wanted to see if early childhood teachers, with little to no music background, could be trained to use music in developmentally appropriate ways to boost early literacy development.
Led by Maria Runfola, PhD, and Elisabeth Etopio, PhD, the team recruited 165 preschoolers to participate in music activities led by 11 daycare teachers. As part of the daycare curriculum, the preschool educators leading the music classes received training in musicianship skills and specific strategies for leading preschoolers’ music development. Prior to this early literacy study, these preschool teachers did not have any music training. The researchers found that participating preschoolers experienced a boost in oral vocabulary and understanding of grammar compared to students not enrolled in the preschool curriculum. Plus, children with lower initial literacy skills saw the biggest positive impact.
“First, we found that the musicianship of the early childhood teachers improved as did their ability to guide music activities in ways that enhanced student music development,” explained Runfola in a press release, Study Finds Link Between Music and Preschoolers Reading Readiness.
Since the preschool teachers did not come from a musical background, it was not surprising that participating children did not experience a significant boost to musicality, such as rhythm-pattern achievement. However, the researchers concluded that early childhood teachers without a music background could be trained to teach a daycare curriculum that uses music as a vehicle for early literacy and language development.
“Administrators need to better understand the importance of the arts to children’s development,” Runfola concluded in the press release. “We hope this research will help music educators and childhood educators support their requests for music time for the youngest of our students. Children need daily appropriate music activity to stimulate their neural activity to develop tonal and rhythm audiation that in turn appears to help their emergent literacy skill.”
If music be the food of literacy, then play on indeed!
Preschool curriculum helps daycare teachers use music to boost early literacy
Created by Kindermusik International, ABC Music & Me is a daycare curriculum that uses music and movement activities to boost early literacy and language skills while also cultivating turn-taking and sharing, improving coordination, enhancing creativity, and more.
Through a robust classroom kit that includes Digital Teacher Guides, ABC Music & Me provides step-by-step planned out lessons so even educators with no musical experience can begin teaching this daycare curriculum immediately.
For more information about using ABC Music & Me as a supplemental daycare curriculum, email us at info@abcmusicandme.com.
Jump for joy: Busy bodies and second language learning
This video demonstrates the Total Physical Response approach to second language learning and shows a parent and child at home using one of the recorded activities from ABC English & Me.
It all started with movement. When James Asher, a professor of psychology at San Jose State University in California, started asking why young children were dropping out of school, he found a link to second language acquisition:
“The most difficult learning task for both children and adults may be the attempt to acquire a second language in school. A number of studies have shown that few students – often less than 5% who start in a second language – continue to proficiency. This lack of success is striking when compared to the language achievement of most six-year-olds, who without schooling have mastered all the essential parts of the individual’s native language.”
Searching for a solution, Asher started looking at why some young learners developed a second language skill and why others didn’t. The link was movement. What he found is that children who could hear a movement word, and demonstrate comprehension of that movement word by doing it – such as jump, dance, or run – were better able to learn and retain the new information over a period of time.
He developed a method for second language learning centered on movement and wrote a book about it, Learning Another Language Through Actions: The Complete Teacher’s Guidebook.
Asher called this physical approach to teaching a second language: total physical response or TPR.
In study after study for 25 years, laboratory experiments and classroom observations have demonstrated results that were extremely positive. When the instructor skillfully uses the target language to direct the student’s behavior, understanding of the utterance is transparent, often in only one exposure. Also, the understanding is achieved without stress and then retained for weeks, months, and even years. Language-body communications is a fascinating and powerful principle of learning. It seems to be a universal principle that holds true for language including sign language for the deaf. It seems to hold true for an age group that has been studied from children to senior citizens.
This approach is an essential part of the ABC English & Me program. And we were so delighted to watch a parent and child share the joy of learning – and moving – at home.
It’s the kind of learning that makes you jump for joy.
their ability to “inspire a child to grow a deeper appreciation, respect, and responsibility for his or her natural environment.” Below are our personal favorites from the 
