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5 Ways Music Positively Impacts Children with Hearing Loss

5 Ways Music Positively Impacts Children with Hearing Loss

Music is vital in the development of all young children, including children with hearing loss.

How do I know? I live it every day.

I’m someone with total hearing loss in one ear.

I’m a music educator who works with hearing-impaired children (at the Central Institute for the Deaf in St. Louis, MO).

And I’m a mom of a child with severe hearing loss who, with the help of bilateral cochlear implants and years of music education, has now successfully transitioned to mainstream school.

Continue reading “5 Ways Music Positively Impacts Children with Hearing Loss”
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Why Music In Schools Post COVID Is Critical

Why Music In Schools Post COVID Is Critical

Remember when music in schools campaigns really took off in the 90s? The quest to make music a standard part of the  “3 Rs:” Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic, still isn’t over.

Wait…only one of those starts with an R!

Aside from the letter discrepancy, the narrow focus of the 3Rs is outdated. So, how can we get all schools on board with a modernized view of early learning?

First, we need a new acronym. And here’s why music should get its own letter.

Continue reading “Why Music In Schools Post COVID Is Critical”
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How Music Teaches Kids to Self-Regulate

Kindermusik | How to Calm an Upset Child with Music

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!

Continue reading “How Music Teaches Kids to Self-Regulate”

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Kindermusik by the Numbers

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Theresa Case provides research based reasons why early childhood, group musical activity is beneficial for each age – from birth to age 7. Get out there and get those little ones making music and moving![/vc_column_text][vc_video link=”https://vimeo.com/181921295″][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row el_class=”search-inline”][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”Find a Class Near You!” font_container=”tag:h3|text_align:left”][vc_column_text]Select your country and enter your address or postal code to find a Kindermusik class.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row bgcolor=”ki_secondary_orange” el_class=”search-inline form-inline”][vc_column][class_finder_form layout=”inline” button_label=”Search” hide_radius=”true” css=”” country_label=”Country” radius_label=”Search Radius”][/vc_column][/vc_row]

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Kids Tap Their Way to Better Grammar

“Conjunction Junction wants your function? Hooking up words and phrases and clauses.” Do you know the rest of the lyrics to that old School House Rock favorite? Take a listen and sing along!

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6GrqMtlrf4[/youtube]

You might be surprised to learn that the song provided more than a Saturday morning distraction. It also actually taught children about grammar. In fact, a first-of-its-kind research study from Vanderbilt University shows an association between musical rhythm and grammar.

Exploring the links between grammar and musical rhythm

In the study, Reyna Gordon, Ph.D. measured the grammar skills and music skills of 25 typically developing 6 year olds. While the two tests were different, Gordon found that children who performed well on one of the tests also did well on the second test. Musical experience, socio-economic backgrounds, or IQ did not matter. Gordon suggests that the similarities between the rhythms in music and the rhythms of language explain how children who did well on one test also did well on the other.

According to the study, in grammar children’s minds sort the sounds they hear into words, phrases, and sentences. The rhythm of language helps them to properly sort those sounds.  In music, rhythmic sequences give structure to musical phrases and help listeners move to a steady beat.

“I’ve been thinking a lot about this idea… is music necessary?” confesses Gordon in a press release. “Those of us in the field of music cognition, we know—it does have a unique role in brain development.”

Yes! Yes, it does!

Don’t Do Try this at Home or in Class

Parents and early childhood educators can support young children’s grammar skills by actively engaging in musical activities together. Try putting on some music or singing a song and inviting children to tap along to the steady beat. Children can clap hands or knees, gently bang a wooden spoon on a plastic bowl, or shake a homemade instrument. This Kindermusik class in the Ukraine tapped to the beat using rhythm sticks:

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGrkriXGhBw[/youtube]

Find out more about Kindermusik at www.Kindermusik.com.

Contributed by Lisa Camino Rowell, a freelance writer living in the Atlanta area.
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How to Teach Babies Language Skills Before They Can Talk

bigstockphoto_Happy_Mom_1646790Do you ever wonder what newborns would say if they could talk? Where am I? What just happened? Who turned on the lights? Whew, that was a lot of work! I’m exhausted. Why is everyone staring at me? Do I have something on my face? Mom! Dad! It’s me! Truth is—most newborns all say the same thing: WaaaaWaaaa!
Of course, children aren’t born talking. However, even at birth, a child can usually respond to a mother’s voice, an early sign of communication, Speech and early language development involves both receptive language (what a child hears and understands) and expressive language (what a child says to others through sounds and gestures). Receptive language skills show up first as babies learn to turn towards interesting sounds or respond to tones and even their own names.

New Research: Improving Babies’ Language Skills Before They Can Talk

A new study from Rutgers University indicates that babies can be taught to better recognize sounds that “might” be language. This would increase brain development in the areas responsible for language acquisition and processing.
In the study led by Emily Benasich who directs the Infancy Studies Laboratory at Rutgers University’s Center for Molecular and Behavioral Neuroscience, the team found that when 4-month-old babies learned to pay attention to increasingly complex non-language audio patterns, their brain scans at 7 months old showed they were faster and more accurate at detecting other sounds important to language than babies who had not been exposed to the sound patterns.
“Young babies are constantly scanning the environment to identify sounds that might be language,” explained Benasich in a press release. “This is one of their key jobs – as between 4 and 7 months of age they are setting up their pre-linguistic acoustic maps….If you shape something while the baby is actually building it, it allows each infant to build the best possible auditory network for his or her particular brain. This provides a stronger foundation for any language (or languages) the infant will be learning.”
Take a look inside the Laboratory:
[youtube] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJ3yZDoRwOs[/youtube]

Use Music to Support Early Language Development

In Kindermusik classes, we provide many opportunities for caregivers and babies to communicate with each other both verbally and nonverbally. For example, when we actively listen to a specific sound such as a clock sound or running water sound, integrate language and movement during a song, or use sign language, babies gain practice hearing words and making connections to their meanings—all which heightens babies’ abilities to communicate!

Find out more at Kindermusik.com.

Contributed by Lisa Camino Rowell a freelance writer living in the Atlanta area.
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Parents’ Involvement in Screen Time Matters

mom and young girl reading ebook togetherYoung children learn best through hands-on, multi-sensory experiences with a loving and trusted caregiver. However, with technology firmly imbedded into the daily lives and routines of families today, parents and early childhood educators often struggle with knowing the ideal ways to incorporate screen time that also supports what we know about how children learn.
One thing we do know without a doubt is that parents’ involvement in screen time matters. A new report from Zero to Three, “Research-Based Guidelines for Screen Use for Children Under Three Years Old,” offers some practical suggestions for parents concerning screen time and technology. Here are a few of the tips.

3 Tips for Healthy Screen Time with Young Children

1. Parents should participate in the screen experience and make it a language-rich, interactive activity. As parents and children watch or play screen-based games together, parents can talk with their children about what they are seeing. We love how this mom beautifully incorporates a video field trip from Kindermusik@Home into on-the-floor, sensitive, child-centered play with her toddler. Notice how she encourages counting and asks questions about what they see on the screen:
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t19lH9ly7rs[/youtube]
2. Make connections between what children see on the screen with the real world. In the school years, children will be asked to make those connections when reading, such as text-to-self and then later text-to-text. Early childhood offers the ideal time to lay a foundation for recognizing associations between things. For example, if children learn about the different letters of the alphabet by playing a game on a tablet, parents can later point out various objects in the room or at the grocery store that start with those same letters. Or, if a character in an interactive ebook learns over the course of the story how to share a favorite toy with a friend, parents can refer back to that lesson when teaching their own children how to share with friends.
3. Create ways to extend the learning away from the screen. For example, in the video above, the parent and child can go on a walk together and notice the various dogs they encounter or visit a pet store to see the fish. While there, the mom can point out the different colors they see, encourage counting, and make connections between what they watched at home.

Find out more about Kindermusik at www.Kindermusik.com.

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

 

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Kindermusik International leads the way in Digital Publishing for educators, families, and children

Kindermusik Digital Learning Platform for Kids

Kindermusik Digital Learning Platform for Kids
Homepage with Monthly Units

Yes, we’re tooting our own horns a bit because we don’t think a bumper sticker, like “My textbooks fit in my earbuds,” would ever really take off. So every once in a while, we need to celebrate in other ways.

Kindermusik International is leading the way in Digital Publishing. In the last 5 years we’ve been working to convert over 25 years worth of research and curricula, into one easily downloadable system. And the process is running more smoothly than ever before.

No more clunky, spiral bound notebooks. No more children walking home from school, weighed down by an increasingly heavy load of books. And no more paper waste. Kindermusik International’s online textbooks and interactive learning lessons are available on a variety of mobile devices.

Learn more about online Kindermusik Educator training. Click here to receive FREE information on becoming a Kindermusik Educator.

Lesson prep is as easy as updating as syncing your iPod. And Digital Teachers Guides are available online so you can download the lessons and print them out, or, bring your iPad right into the classroom.

And even if you’re not ready to go completely digital, we’ve got you covered, too. You can easily download the class music and activities and burn them to CDs.

Not convinced? Consider this.
Will iPads Replace Textbooks? Seeking Alpha, November 1, 2012
If test scores keep going up, they will. Educators can’t ignore a student’s preference for an interactive tablet over a used textbook, and it seems grades are improving, too. “Houghton Mifflin recently performed a pilot study using an iPad text for Algebra 1 courses, and found that 20 increase in the number of students who scored ‘Proficient’ or ‘Advanced’ in subject comprehension when using tablets rather than paper textbook counterparts.”