Minds On Music – The Kindermusik Blog - Page 76 of 105 - For three generations, Kindermusik has helped millions of children around the world build a strong foundation for a lifetime of learning.

Kindermusik Community Updates

For all our Kindermusik families…

We are now making it easier for all Kindermusik communities to come together and learn from each other by combining our blog communities! Kindermusik has multiple brands across the globe. For better collaboration, we will now communicate through 1 blog:

Minds on Music is the Official Blog of Kindermusik International.

We welcome our communities from:

ABC Music & Me – Kindermusik’s early childhood music curriculum. Staying current with research on early literacy and language development, we share these findings with our community and continue to incorporate into our curriculum. As many schools, childcare centers, head start programs, special needs programs, after-school programs, and others use ABC Music & Me, we continue to see positive results as we help children learn through music.

ABC English & Me – our ELL (English Language Learning) curriculum. We’ll continue to share exciting stories from around the world of children learning English through music. Our community of bilingual children and families continue to grow so we’ll keep sharing ELL resources, tips, research and inspiration!

Kindermusik Green – our approach to Sustainability. We believe in making a better future for our children, not only by empowering children to learn through music, but also through sustainable practices. We’ll share tips, stories, and action items we take as a company to promote a Green future; teaching kids, families, and educators how to incorporate sustainability into their lives.

Subscribe to our Minds on Music RSS feed today so you don’t miss out on all the valuable info.

Thanks for being part of the Kindermusik Community!

Using music to meet the Common Core State Standards

As research continues to shed new light on how children learn best, standards and teaching methods evolve to both incorporate those latest insights and to meet the needs of today’s students. This year 45 US states and the District of Columbia implemented the Common Core State Standards to help prepare children for success in the classroom and beyond. When used in conjunction with a Common Core curriculum, music can be an effective vehicle for teaching children early literacy and language, including phonological awareness and vocabulary acquisition.

How to use music in a standards based curriculum to teach phonological awareness and vocabulary acquisition

Phonological Awareness: Songs with rhyming lyrics can help children build phonological awareness. Where spoken language is comprised of a stream of connected phonemes, music is comprised of a series of discrete musical notes or tones. Understanding a spoken sentence requires successfully auditory processing of the individual phonemes combined with the intonation communicated by pitch, and hearing music requires listening for the individual notes combined with their rhythmic values. Because of these fundamental similarities, the human brain processes music and language in some similar ways.
Vocabulary Acquisition: According to educational researchers, there is substantial evidence that children acquire vocabulary incidentally by reading and listening to oral stories and song lyrics could provide a source of new vocabulary. With the addition of movement activities, children learn new vocabulary through hearing, singing, and doing.

Common Core Curriculum uses music as the vehicle for learning

ABC Music & Me, a standards-based curriculum, aligns with the Common Core State Standards as well as Pre-K national and state standards. Our Common Core curriculum uses music as the vehicle for teaching children early literacy and language. See how our Common Core curriculum aligns with state standards: 5 ways ABC Music & Me helps teachers meet the Common Core State Standards.

For more information about using ABC Music & Me in your classroom or school to help meet the Common Core State Standards, email us at info@abcmusicandme.com.

The Lifelong Benefits of Music – New Research

Early Music Lessons Have Longtime Benefits

“Music is great, music is fantastic, music is social —

let them enjoy it for what it really is.” said Ms. Parbery-Clark, a doctoral candidate in the Auditory Neuroscience Lab at Northwestern University. Even the NYTimes is giving attention to the benefits of music for kids in their recent post; Early Music Lessons Have Longtime Benefits.

Photo Credit: NYTimes | Joyce Hesselberth

As mentioned in this NYTimes post…research studies continue to show the correlation between musical training in childhood and strengthened auditory skills and language-based learning.

Researchers at Northwestern University recorded the auditory brainstem responses of college students — that is to say, their electrical brain waves — in response to complex sounds.

The group of students who reported musical training in childhood had more robust responses — their brains were better able to pick out essential elements, like pitch, in the complex sounds when they were tested.

And this was true even if the lessons had ended years ago.

At Kindermusik, we know it’s important to incorporate music into children’s lives for many reasons, including early childhood development. We see developmental milestones happen every day with so many children. As new research and studies are conducted, we continue to learn the importance and understand the lifelong effects and benefits of music – and look forward to incorporating this into our curriculum and share this knowledge with our Kindermusik students, families, and educators around the world.

Did you know Kindermusik is in over 70+ Countries?

Find a Class Near You!

Inspiration behind the Mother Tongue Lullaby Project

Experts say linguistic diversity is a crucial component to preserving disappearing languages around the world. This video – as well as all the Kindermusik Educators in over 35 countries around the world – inspired the Mother Tongue Lullaby Project.

With this project, we’re hoping to record mothers and fathers from around the world singing their first language lullabies. These soothing songs are one of the first ways we, as children, experience language, comfort, and bonding. Before we could understand the words and their meaning, lullabies could communicate that “music is in the house, all is well. Everything here is safe enough to soothe and sing to you. ”

As you can hear from the hand full of lullabies we’ve already recorded and posted, these lullabies still communicate an unbreakable bond between the parent, or grandparent and child.

If you’re a Kindermusik Educator, a parent, grandparent, or loving uncle, or aunt; or you simply have a favorite lullaby to sing for us in your Mother Tongue language, please let us know. We’d love to record you.

We can record your songs over the phone, and we’ll post the recordings to the project’s sound cloud account, as well as on the project’s tumblr site.

Do you know a lullaby in one of these disappearing languages?
Mother Tongue Lullaby on soundcloud.com
On tumblr
Watch the project’s video launch

Kindermusik and Your Child: Bedtime Rituals

Kindermusik Bedtime Rituals - Little Boy Snuggles Teddy

“Bedtime is a monumental moment to a baby or toddler, a time of transition in which parents hold nearly shamanistic power to tame the forces of darkness.“ – Meg Cox, The Heart of A Family, p. 213.

In a Kindermusik class, we have some very special rituals we include in every class. That’s because young children thrive on the love and comfort of favorite rituals. At home, bedtime provides a special time of connection for parent and child. As children grow, it can also become a very special time for parents to stay connected and in touch with what is really going on in their children’s lives.

Bedtime Ritual Ideas You Can Share with Your Children

Reading
Listening to crickets
Inventing stories
Singing
Going through a specific bedtime routine (get a drink, change diapers/get a drink, kiss & hug, turn out the light)
Infant massage, back scratches, and foot rubs

Bedtime Songs for Kids

A great way to help kids unwind after a long and busy day is to choose a dedicated lullaby that you sing together every single night at bedtime. Your child will love not only the music, but also the predictability and comfort of that special bonding ritual. He or she might also enjoy listening to some soothing music with the lights out. Some great choices are available on our Sailing to Dr eamland CD.

Find a Kindermusik Class in your area today!

Compiled by Theresa Case, whose Kindermusik program at Piano Central Studios in Greenville, SC, is proudly among the top 1% of Kindermusik programs worldwide.

Recognizing Pitch = Positive Effects on Early Language Development

Music Benefits Early Childhood Development

At Kindermusik, we know music has positive effects on early childhood development and language acquisition. And when there’s new research to prove it, we get more excited!

Language Development in Children

New research, reported this week in Science Daily suggests that babies who are able to recognize pitch could also detect language rules, even better than adults. Scientists found that “when it comes to extracting complex rules from spoken language, a three-month-old outperforms adult learners”.

By monitoring babies’ brain responses, scientists were able to determine that infants detected discrepancies with language rules just by hearing changes in syllables or pitch.

“These findings not only help understand how children manage to learn language so quickly during early development, but also point to a strong link between very basic auditory skills and sophisticated rule learning abilities.”

So, next time you’re at Kindermusik class with your little one, think about all the different changes in pitch and tone your child is exposed to – this is actively supporting your child’s language development skills.

Not yet enrolled in Kindermusik? Explore the joy of learning and
Try a FREE Preview Class.

A Little Bit of Music Goes a Long Way!

Music Benefits the Brain — Source: blogs.scientificamerican.com

We know music has many benefits, especially for the way kids learn and how a child’s brain develops. So we get excited about supportive research like this study recently published in the Journal of Neuroscience:

Even A Few Years Of Music Training Benefits The Brain.

A team of researchers at Northwestern University, including the well-known Nina Kraus, share findings on the benefits of early childhood music education.

“…Childhood music instruction has strong linguistic benefits and improves performance on everyday listening tasks. Since we live in an inherently noisy world, the better we are at focusing on sound and perceiving different sounds, the better. This can be particularly important for children with learning disorders or those for whom English is a second language.”

Through this study and other research, here are some known benefits of music training:

Improves hearing

Bolsters brain function

Strengthens reading skills

Increases math abilities

Improves social development

Helps people become better team players

Supports self-esteem

Our mission at Kindermusik, to instill a lifelong love of music and a foundation for learning in children, completely aligns with this research. We are especially thrilled about the quote from Nina Kraus, supporting the concept that even little exposure to music as can go a long way…

“Based on what we already know about the ways that music helps shape the brain, the study suggests that short-term music lessons may enhance lifelong listening and learning,” said Kraus.

We encourage you to share your love for music & extend the benefits of music to others. Please invite your friends and family to Try a Free Kindermusik Class!

FOL Fridays: Pre-ensemble Development

One day, your child may want to participate in a team sport or play in a band. Kindermusik will provide him or her with the unique opportunity to develop and practice the skills that are required to perform in an ensemble, skills like distinguishing between sounds, listening for the appropriate entrance, timing the participation, accomplishing the steady-beat play with an outside source, and playing with others.

Ideas for parents:

Even the youngest children can experience ensemble, whether it’s in Kindermusik Village or it’s just the two of you at home tapping on the pots and pans. You might even enjoy putting together a Family Jam, a time when the whole family grabs something to tap, shake, or jingle as you all play-along to a recording or a song you’re singing.

– Contributed by Theresa Case, whose Greenville, SC program, Kindermusik at Piano Central Studios, is proudly among the top 1% of Kindermusik programs worldwide.

Kindermusik and Your Child: Social-Emotional Development

Making friends.
Sharing.
Learning how to express frustration appropriately.
Figuring out conflicts peacefully.
Helping someone who has been hurt.
Waiting patiently.
Following rules.
Enjoying the company of others.
Internal motivation to succeed.

All of these qualities (and more!) describe what we all wish to see as parents is the healthy social development of our children. Like any skill, young children develop these abilities in small steps over time, and they learn them from you, their first social connection and teacher. On the whole, young children who spend time singing, playing, and moving with other children are better prepared to be confident and self-aware, build positive relationships with peers, and get the best out of the learning environments and opportunities that life will bring them…just one of the many reasons that Kindermusik is so much more than music!

The Kindermusik classroom is the perfect place for your child to practice and develop social skills. Our activities help children learn to work with, understand, and enjoy others, while teaching parents to model activities that include social interaction and the joy of learning. At every level from Birth – 7, Kindermusik curricula are written to support the development of your child’s social & emotional skills with age-appropriate, challenging activities.

In fact, studies show that music and movement experiences in a group setting impact all seven areas of social-emotional development* identified by researchers. Those seven areas are:

Confidence
Curiosity
Intentionality
Self-control
Relatedness
Capacity to communicate
Cooperativeness

*Click to read more FABULOUS Research on the 7 Social Competencies and Kindermusik by Heidi Bennett.

Compiled by Theresa Case, whose Kindermusik program at Piano Central Studios in Greenville, SC, is proudly among the top 1% of Kindermusik programs worldwide.

FOL Fridays: Pattern Awareness

Kindermusik - Learning About Patterns with Kids Instruments

Pattern awareness is crucial to learning and memory. Just as in reading stories, singing and rhythmic speech expose participants directly to the patterns of language, including rhythm, speech sounds, syntax, and rhyme.

Tips for parents:

Patterns are all around – outdoors, indoors, in colors, how we arrange items on the counter or table, and even on the clothes we wear. With patterns surrounding us, it’s easy to play “pick up” pattern games with your child. First, point to the pattern. Have your child identify the individual parts. Then work together to point out how it all goes together. If there are objects that can be moved, you can even challenge your child to create some patterns of his own.

You can even try learning about patterns with your Kindermusik instruments!