Minds On Music – The Kindermusik Blog - Page 28 of 106 - For three generations, Kindermusik has helped millions of children around the world build a strong foundation for a lifetime of learning.

Why Do You Sing?

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Dr. Boyle conducts the Middle Level All State Choir in Wisconsin. Scedra is right in the front row.

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]I teach my students that it’s the conductors job to make others musically powerful. This concept was crystalized for me by Ben Zander in his TED Talk. If you haven’t watched it, you should! As conductors, we develop a vision and inspire others to realize that vision.

When I work with choirs, I tell it like it is. I tell them what I expect – and to paraphrase my friend and fraternity brother, Karl Paulnack, from his Welcome Address to the parents of incoming Boston Conservatory students – I expect them to save lives with their music.

The Wisconsin Middle Level All State Choir was no different. They sang! They gave away their collective voice, honoring the composers, each other, and the audience. I told them – you never know whose life you might change with your music. I believe that. I believe that there could be someone in that audience whose life is at the crossroads – and honest and selfless art given freely by a group of emotionally connected middle schoolers has the power to pull them down the road that leads to life.

We sang! But we also talked about the music. We talked about the historical context of McCartney’s “Blackbird” – so relevant today. Not about a blackbird, friends. Sir Paul wrote this in response to the riots occurring in ’68 after Dr. King was assassinated. And the middle school musicians ate up this information. You could have heard a pin drop when I talked to them about this.

I have started taking a moment at festivals to ask students why they sing – particularly in choir. One young woman, Scedra (pronounced Say-dra – her name was a combination of the initials of grandmothers and great grandmothers) particularly touched me. Scedra was born 2 months premature. She fit in the palm of your hand. Her father’s wedding ring could slide up her arm to her shoulder with room to spare. Scedra is in a wheel chair. She put her hand up to share why she sang….[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][blockquote cite=””]“I sing because it makes me feel like flying. I don’t feel like I’m in my chair. It’s like I’m not disabled anymore.”[/blockquote][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]I wept. I’m weeping now typing this. 149 of her new friends instantly applauded her. The smile on her face eclipsed her chair. Scedra is often (at first sight) defined by her wheelchair, but in that moment, she was simply and beautifully a young woman overjoyed to be making music with her new friends.

Scedra and a host of her colleagues shared from their hearts in a room full of people they had just met. Music did this. Music created this place that allowed these people to be who they were (are!) without fear of judgment.

And that is music’s power.

These young men and women changed my life and for that I will be forever grateful.

Thank God, the universe, and all good things for music.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

New Thoughts for a New Year: Music for Music’s Sake

Happy New Year! It is my great honor to join the Kindermusik team as the editor of Minds on Music Blog. Music has and continues to be my life’s passion, and I am excited to curate a useful resource on behalf of this wonderful organization. Learn more about me here.

We often read that music has tremendous collateral benefit in other subject areas, such as math and English. This is quite true, with plenty of research to back this up. But music possesses intrinsic worth, providing a host of benefits to our human condition. In fact, last year the US Senate voted to list music as a core subject in the Every Child Achieves Act. This recognition was a huge win for music educators and students alike. We’ll explore some of these intrinsic benefits in depth this year, but before we do, here’s a brief list exploring involvement in music for music’s sake.

Continue reading “New Thoughts for a New Year: Music for Music’s Sake”

Music, Autism, and One Little Girl’s Story

During certain times of the year, our lives seem to operate on warp speed. December often flies by the fastest. So, today, we ask that you press pause on your life for a moment and catch a glimpse of one little girl’s story, the loving adults invested in her life, and their shared experience with and through music. This little girl’s story, like music, will challenge you to listen with your heart as well as your ears. As her mom explains: “Life is busy. She has taught us to slow down. I love to look at the world through her eyes….to hear your child sing when they have been nonverbal for so long is amazing.”

So, take a moment and see the world through her eyes.

Learn more about music as a curriculum solution in your school and working with children with special needs.

Contributed by Lisa Camino Rowell, a freelance writer in the Atlanta area.

Toddler and Preschooler Craft: Snow Globe

Looking for an idea to entertain the little ones this week? Let it snow globe! Let it snow globe! Let it snow globe! Gather up a few materials and your toddlers and preschoolers can create both memories and a keepsake with you.

Post your family’s creations on the Kindermusik International Facebook page. Tag it #KindermusikSnowGlobe.

Research: Involving Parents Increases Positive Outcome for Kids Enrolled in Head Start

New research once again shows that an intentional partnership between parents and teachers positively supports children’s educational outcomes. Without a doubt, parents are a child’s first and best teacher. We know that intuitively and we hear that from early childhood experts and teachers. But, let’s face it. Parents need help. They need partners in their children’s education to best equip them in their role as teachers. They need information and they need practical ideas and tools that they can easily use in their everyday routines with their children.

Involving Parents Helps Young Children Maintain Literacy Skills

Recently, a research team recruited 200 children and parents from families enrolled in 24 Head Start programs in rural and urban Pennsylvania. The families were split into two groups. The control group received math games to play on their own. The other group received materials, such as books and learning games, and visits from “educational counselors” who provided coaching on how to use the games with their children. Those materials specifically supported the lessons from the Head Start classroom.

The children who participated in the second group showed significantly higher retention of literacy skills (vocabulary and fluency) and social skills (self-directed learning and social competence) acquired in the classroom when compared to the control group.

A Listening Game to Support Early Literacy Skills

While not a part of the Head Start study above, Kindermusik programs provide materials (games, music, books) and child development information and resources parents can use OUTSIDE the classroom to support what happens INSIDE the classroom. For example, this fun game—“Reading” the Violin”—supports children’s early literacy skills.

Matching sounds to a visual image is an extremely important early literacy skill. It is, in fact, the precursor skill to the alphabetic principle, or the understanding that there is a relationship between letters and sounds. Before children can explore letter-sound relationships and learn to decode words, they must first understand the connection between a sound they hear and an image they see.

This game provides kids lots of practice with associating a specific bit of audio with a specific bit of visual, and they’ll have no idea that this game is actually preparing them to read. It also supports other important early childhood cognitive competences, including:

Selective Attention: the ability to selectively concentrate on one aspect of the environment while ignoring distractions.
Auditory Working Memory: the ability to retain information that has been presented orally (e.g., listening to a target sound and then matching the sound to its image)
Auditory Discrimination: the ability to discriminate between similar sounds.

Did you know Kindermusik offers a program for Head Start and Early Head Start Programs that include materials and resources, like the game above, for families to use? Learn more.

7 Reasons to Give the Gift of Experiences—Like Early Childhood Music Classes!

We love music around here. Surprised? We didn’t think so. During the holiday season, you can often find us listening to favorite songs we first heard as children. (Muppets Christmas, anyone?)

Just listening to certain songs revives memories of twinkling lights, candlelight, laughter, the smell of yummy goodness baking in the oven, and the comfort of family. Each year we look forward to creating more musical memories with our friends and families. It’s no wonder that Oscar Wilde penned: “Memory is the diary we all carry about with us.”

Our childhood memories and experiences help shape who we become as adults. This holiday season why not give the gift of experiences to your child. Every child on your shopping list will love the gift of time and an individualized gift of doing something you love WITH someone you love!

7 Reasons to Give the Gift Experiences to Children

The memories will last a lifetime—long after a child loses interest in the latest toy or gadget.
An “experience” gift can be custom-tailored to a child. Does your little one love new books? Take a trip to the library and read 20 books in one afternoon or all the picture books by the same author. Does your child sing throughout the day? Host a family karoke night and spend the evening singing and dancing together. Is your little guy or girl fascinated with the great outdoors? Camp out in the living room!
You don’t need to find a spot for one more toy. (You know what we are talking about!)
Your child learns the value of spending time together.
No batteries or assembly required (i.e. no late nights spent putting together toys or lamenting proper sticker placement on tiny plastic cars.) Woo-hoo!
It’s fun for you, too.
Investing time with our kids pays off by creating heart-to-heart connections with them. As your children grow, they will begin to shift focus to peer-to-peer relationships but by teaching them the value of spending time as a family, children will RETURN the gift to you during the teen and adult years….and pass the gift on to their own children.

Of course, we would LOVE for you to give the gift of music. It’s what we do after all. However, here are 18 other ideas for “experience” gifts.

Find a local Kindermusik educator to give the gift of music AND support a local small business owner.

Calm Your Baby by Singing

If there was something that could keep your baby calm for twice as long as anything else, would you use it? New research from the University of Montreal has discovered the secret… singing to your baby!

At Kindermusik, we could be considered something of an expert on not just what to sing to your baby, but also how to sing to your baby. (And don’t panic. Our suggestions have nothing to do with voice lessons or singing in public.) Since we’re also all about making parenting a little easier and a whole lot more musical, here are some of our best tips for what and how to sing to your little one. You can thank us later for being able to enjoy twice the amount of calm!

What to sing to your baby

You Are My Sunshine*
Love Somebody*
Everybody Loves Baby*
Skinnamarink
May There Always Be Sunshine
Golden Slumbers
Tell Me Why

FREEBIE! Download the songs marked with an asterisk (*) for free here. Other songs are available for purchase here.

How to sing to your baby

Even if you’d never sing a solo in public, remember that your voice is the most beautiful sound in the world to your child.
Forgot the words? No problem. Humming works too!
While standing, gently sway to the steady beat as you sing. The combination of your singing and the side-to-side pendulum-like motion is very soothing.
Use both the power of music and intentional touch. After bath time, incorporate a little infant massage as you sing to your baby.
Sing in the car. No one will ever know that it’s the third time around singing “Skinnamarink” because it’s your favorite song too!
Cuddle your baby close and rock together. Your little one will love feeling the reassuring vibration of your vocal chords and the gentle thump of your heartbeat.

Looking for other ways to calm your baby? Come visit a Kindermusik class and learn from an early childhood expert.

Shared by Kindermusik educator and award-winning program owner Theresa Case, who has loved every opportunity she’s had over the past 20-plus years to encourage parents to sing and bond with their babies.

The Power of “I Love You” Rituals

Created by Dr. Becky Bailey, founder of Conscious Discipline and author of “I Love You Rituals,” the concept of the “I Love You” rituals is simple and yet astoundingly powerful. Caring touch, kind words, and intentional routine will form the kind of bond and connection that opens not just the heart, but also the mind and the will. Because of the dopamine that’s released and the emotional connections that are made, “I Love You” rituals actually wire the brain for greater impulse control, spur a desire for positive behavior, and increase attention span and impulse control – all things that are crucial for children to succeed in relationships, in school, and in life.

Just as important as the “I love you” part is the ritual part. Rituals are those special ways you do things – the way you greet one another, the way you reconnect after time apart, or what you do every night before bed. Rituals are not only meaningful; they are also deliberate and predictable. Dr. Bailey’s “I Love You” rituals are used to strengthen relationships, build trust, and during daily routines or transitions from one activity to the next.

Two of Dr. Bailey’s more well-known “I Love You” rituals are a beautiful revision of two well-known nursery rhymes.

Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star
Twinkle, twinkle, little star,
What a wonderful child you are!
With bright eyes and nice round cheeks,
Talented person from head to feet.
Twinkle, twinkle, little star,
What a wonderful child you are!

A Wonderful Woman
A wonderful woman lived in a shoe.
She had so many children
She knew exactly what to do.
She held them,
She rocked them,
And tucked them in bed.
“I love you, I love you,”
Is what she said.

In Kindermusik, we use music and often a few special rituals borrowed from Dr. Bailey to strengthen bonds and emotional connection. The power of “I love you” and the ritual of “I love you” is truly in the emotional connection, an emotional connection the ultimately comes full circle. Grab a tissue and watch this video, and you’ll be convinced. “I Love You” rituals should have a place in every home, in every classroom, and in every heart.

Are you at the Zero to Three Conference in Seattle, Washington, December 2-4, 2015? Stop by the Kindermusik International booth!

Getting the Rhythm of Language Development

Our speech is made up of sounds, patterns, and rhythms, so it makes sense that being in a environment of sounds and developing a strong sense of rhythm and steady beat in the earliest years of childhood can positively impact language development. Some researchers even go so far as to make the bold claim that “[w]ithout the ability to hear musically, it would be impossible to learn to speak.”

Enter Kindermusik, where we too would agree that “…music is a special type of language” and where rhythms, songs, rhymes, and steady beat become almost as natural as breathing. All throughout the Kindermusik experience, from birth to 7 years, children are immersed in a world of communication through sound, through musically being sung to and spoken to as infants and then invited to be participants in the sound-making by singing and speaking back. In addition to singing, rhymes and steady beat activities also form some of the earliest experiences with music in this immersive environment.

Because of the process-based emphasis in Kindermusik, the learning is natural, easy, and fun. Kids and parents love it, and it doesn’t take long to realize the depth and long-lasting impact of such a rich musical environment on the development of language.

Want to support your child’s early language and literacy development? Then find a local Kindermusik class!

7 Ways Music Teaches Kids Thankfulness

Music changes us. Makes us better. Helps us think. Gives us a way to express ourselves. Lifts our spirits. Impacts our memory. Gets us moving. Boosts self-confidence. Raises IQ and academic potential. But music classes like Kindermusik can also instill values, perhaps one of the most important values being that of gratitude.

The root of gratitude is in our emotions, and there’s no better tool for getting us in touch with our feelings and emotions than music. So how exactly does a music class inspire gratitude?

Music classes are a group experience and as such, teach kids to be appreciative of each individual’s contributions to the the group.
Music classes are a happy experience, and out of that happiness often comes a spontaneous, straight-from-the-heart expression of gratitude from children.
Music classes are an interactive experience, bringing parents and kids together in class and/or at home and strengthening the loving bonds between family members.
Music classes are an enlightening experience, helping all of us to affirm, celebrate, and be grateful for each child’s own unique gifts.
Music classes are a social experience that gives kids a chance to develop friendships that they will appreciate for a long time to come.
Music classes are a delightful experience, creating special memories that we will hold in our hearts forever.
Music classes are an inspiring experience, making us thankful for the little things – a smile, a hug, a together moment, and a song in our hearts.

Minds On Music – The Kindermusik Blog

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