Minds On Music – The Kindermusik Blog
For three generations, Kindermusik has helped millions of children around the world build a strong foundation for a lifetime of learning.
Here are some quick tips to help families get into a productive, positive daily groove.
Routines bring motivation, productivity, comfort, and even relaxation. Musical pre-routines are the ultimate secret to jumpstarting and securing healthy morning and evening tasks. Here’s why…
Continue reading “How Musical Pre-Routines Boost Family Productivity”Here are some quick tips to help families get into a productive, positive daily groove.
Routines bring motivation, productivity, comfort, and even relaxation. Musical pre-routines are the ultimate secret to jumpstarting and securing healthy morning and evening tasks. Here’s why…
Continue reading “How Musical Pre-Routines Boost Family Productivity”Here are some quick tips to help families get into a productive, positive daily groove.
Routines bring motivation, productivity, comfort, and even relaxation. Musical pre-routines are the ultimate secret to jumpstarting and securing healthy morning and evening tasks. Here’s why…
Continue reading “How Musical Pre-Routines Boost Family Productivity”
Summer is the perfect time to bring music-making and nature together. Young children love exploring the world around them—from animals to plants to weather—and they love creating sound. In Kindermusik, we have a song for everything, turning your ordinary day into a musical summer day! Try these easy family activities to add a lovely tune to your day.
Continue reading “A Musical Summer Day | Creating Musical Memories”
When you think back on the summers of your childhood, you might have special memories of things you anticipated all through the long school year. Freedom! Sunshine! Swimming! Sleeping in!
In the not too distant future looms an important day. It’s almost time for your child to walk through the doors of Kindergarten as a student! Gulp. Take deep breaths. You’re an adult…you can handle this! Let’s focus instead on your child.
Continue reading “Kindergarten? I’m Not Ready!! How To Prepare Your Child”
O the month of May, the merry month of May,
So frolic, so gay, and so green, so green, so green!
O, and then did I unto my true love say,
Sweet Peg, thou shalt be my Summer’s Queen.
–Thomas Dekker
We all know people who face challenges and have special needs. At some point, most of us face our own hurdles physically, mentally, spiritually, emotionally, relationally. Babies and toddlers, young children and teenagers, adults and retirees… Struggles are a part of the human condition and occur across all ages. Sometimes the struggles are temporary; other times they are a permanent part of life.
Music has been part of the human experience for millenia. This is not speculation, but fact supported by archaeological evidence. Artifacts such as a flute carved some 35,000 years ago, and ancient art, like Cyclades’ depictions of flute and harp players (2,700 BCE), suggest that that music has been around for as long as we have.
Music—whether you’re listening to it or playing it—has loads of benefits, but shared musical play (the act of making and reacting to music with another person) takes those benefits to the next level. Shared musical play is the ultimate multi-sensory experience that boosts cognitive, whole body, and social-emotional development, and supports critical grownup/child connection…all through PLAY!
There’s research to prove why practicing shared musical play at home is absolutely essential to positive growth and family engagement during the early years.
So, what exactly does it say and how can you replicate it?
Continue reading “Why Shared Musical Play with Your Child Is So Important (And Ideas to Implement!)”
He’s so whiny. She’s a hitter. He cries non-stop. She can’t stop talking…if this sounds like your child(ren), they’re not wild—they need help learning how to self-regulate.
When grownups are overstimulated or don’t get their way, we (usually) use tools like taking a deep breath or a walk to make sure we don’t lose it. When we self-regulate, we balance our nervous systems. That helps us access our prefrontal cortex, where logic lives.
When it comes to self-regulation in children, they’ve got two things working against them:
1) They aren’t born with the tools to regulate their nervous systems, and
2) Their prefrontal cortex isn’t fully formed, so they need extra help to reach and dissect that logic.
Enter music!
Believe it or not, Thanksgiving has already come and gone. (Wait, did you blink and miss Halloween? Us too.) And with barely time to breathe—much less digest all of that food!—Americans have shifted focus from stuffing their turkeys to stuffing their Christmas stockings.
Continue reading “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year…”