early learning Archives - Minds On Music

5 Ways Unstructured Play Boosts Learning (Plus Tips-By-Age Guide!)

Ways Unstructured Play Boosts Learning - Kindermusik

This is a brand new day.

Ev’rything is just fine.

Time to go outside and play

Ev’rything is just fine.

(from Kindermusik’s rhythmic chant, “Ev’rything Is Just Fine”) Listen below!

“Ev’rything Is Just Fine” is a Kindermusik track that gets stuck in your head. And if you have or care for young children, that’s a good thing!. “Time to go outside and play…” Exactly. We must never forget that young children NEED TO PLAY. For everything to be “just fine” for them, a key ingredient is regular, unstructured play.

6 Ways to Prevent Summer Slide

Usually, family summer themes include vacation, festivals, summer camps, and more. This year is very different, with overtones of catch-up and preventing severe boredom in the midst of lingering closures. However, one thing hasn’t changed…the looming threat of “summer slide” which extends from babies to early elementary students. So, how do families combat learning loss while recovering from a pandemic?

School Readiness Begins at Birth

Getting your baby ready for school??? Sounds like that’s rushing things. And that’s the last thing any of us want… to rush those precious early years and lose out on those wonderful opportunities for bonding, learning, and making memories. The window of learning does open early, and it is open the widest during the first years of life.

So the question becomes how best to make the most of that window while it’s open, giving your child every advantage in a way that is meaningful, lasting, and appropriate – developmentally, cognitively, physically, and emotionally.

Enter Kindermusik.

Kindermusik was developed on the firm belief that parents are a child’s first – and best! – teacher. From your very first class with your sweet little infant to that proud moment when you watch your big kid graduate from Kindermusik, everything we do in Kindermusik is intentionally designed to help and inspire you as your child’s “teacher.”

Here’s how Kindermusik helps you get your child ready for school – and for life! – in the most perfectly delightful, perfectly appropriate, and perfectly memorable of ways.

Kindermusik strengthens the critical emotional bonds between parent and child that are essential for successful learning to take place, now and later on.
Songs and rhymes provide a vital foundation for the early stages of language development.
Music and movement support and enhance the formation of neural networks, all of the neurons and synapses that the brain may eventually prune if not used and exercised in the early years.
A musical environment develops listening skills, teaching children how to be more aware and more focused.
Rocking and swaying stimulate the vestibular system which is responsible for balance and coordination.
Bouncing, clapping, and instrument play ingrain a sense of steady beat. Steady beat is foundational to speech development, motor skill development, logical thinking skills, and even verbal organization.
The rich multi-sensory environment experienced with Kindermusik means that children are able to make even stronger cognitive connections and associations with various concepts.
Experiencing the patterns and sequencing in songs, recordings, and dances improves the cognitive skills that are necessary for success in math later on.
First experiences in Kindermusik help your little one become more creative and confident problem-solvers.

And when your child does transition into starting school, wherever that may be, you can still count on Kindermusik to ease the transition and help you capitalize on all of the incredible academic, cognitive, and social advantages that early childhood music classes give.

Learn more about the benefits of early learning with Kindermusik. Try a free class today!

Contributed by Theresa Case who, for over 20 years now, has loved helping eager little learners and their parents get the very best start in Kindermusik in the classes offered at Piano Central Studios in Greenville, SC.

5 ways Kindermusik helps preschoolers reach early learning benchmarks

Preschool teachers notice the signs long before the children do. Boxes of sharpened and unused crayons. Full canisters of tempura paints. New bags of sand for the sensory table. The smell of the freshly laminated name tags. Yes, all signs point to a new school year starting soon!
At the beginning of each school year, preschool teachers gather more than new supplies for the classroom. They also gather key information about the children by identifying and describing each child’s development in various domains. This benchmarking helps educators support the growth of each child to his or her fullest potential throughout the year.
Our early childhood curriculum uses music and movement to support the development and learning across and within domains. We use music to reach children of all abilities and in a classroom of children exhibiting a range of skills and competences.
Whether used in a preschool, Head Start or Early Head Start program, public school, or other early learning setting, Kindermusik’s early childhood curriculum delivers proven results. In fact, children participating for just 30 minutes a week experience a 32 percent more literacy gain than other children. Here are just some of the ways we use music, movement, and stories to help children reach standard benchmarks.

5 ways our early childhood curriculum helps children reach benchmarks

Our Storytime gives preschool teachers ways to ask and answer questions about key details such as the plot or the characters. We know that children benefit from hearing the story multiple times, so it’s repeated weekly in each unit for preschoolers to become familiar with plot, characters, settings, and main events.
Our Hosted Teaching CDs provide brief introductions with key information about a story’s topic and setting. In the second half of each unit, lessons pose a range of recall, inferential, compare/contrast, and beyond-the-text questions. At the end of storytime, the lessons give preschoolers opportunities to ask or answer questions about the story that can help deepen their understanding of the story or subject.
Our songs and poems use rhyme to improve phonological awareness. Research shows that lyrics can help young children improve their comprehension and build their vocabulary and listening skills. Plus, the engaging nature of music helps motivate young children to learn. And, of course, building vocabulary, comprehension, and listening skills are all part of the preschool standards.
Our songs, poems, rhymes, and rituals inspire children to acquire vocabulary incidentally by reading and listening to stories. The texts’ illustrations and activities give children tools to learn new vocabulary through both seeing and doing. To ensure comprehension, teachers often pause the Hosted Teaching CD and ask questions to assess learning as well as answer student questions.
Each unit also includes explicit vocabulary instruction. Words essential to songs and poems appear on picture cards and are introduced through direct instruction or by modeling during group discussions. Research supports the use of direct vocabulary instruction, including the effectiveness of having young children learn robust, academic words.

Tag: early learning