Ocean in a Bottle

We just finished our Creatures of the Ocean class. Here are the instructions for making an ocean in a bottle. If you want to down load the Slippery Fish/Octopus song we used in class click HERE. The song is called Octopus and is on Charlotte Diamonds, “10 Crunchy Carrots” album.


What you need:
•  Empty 2 liter plastic bottle with a lid
• Clear vegetable oil or mineral oil
• Water
• Funnel
• Blue food coloring
• Small star fish, shells and other sea creatures
• Glitter
• White craft glue
• Hot glue (get an adult to help with hot glue)


Steps:
1. Wash and dry 2-liter bottle and remove all labels.
2. Fill bottle halfway with tap water.
3. Add a few drops of blue food coloring and swirl around to mix.
4. Add a little glitter.
5. Add sea cratures.
6. Using funnel, fill the bottle the rest of the way with vegetable oil.
7. Make sure the rim and cap are dry, then apply white craft glue around the rim. Seal cap.
8. Have an adult use a layer around the outside edge to keep it from leaking.
9. Turn the bottle on it’s side and gently rock the bottle to create your very own waves!

Source:  http://funschool.kaboose.com/fun-blaster/summer/crafts/ocean-bottle.html

Creativity & Kindermusik

The importance of developing childhood creativity is discussed in the July 10^th issue of Newsweek.  The article affirms what Kindermusik parents already know, that pretend play helps develop a child’s creativity.  In Kindermusik we are nearly always pretending.  The article states, “Preschoolers who spend more time in role-playing (acting out characters) have higher measures of creativity: voicing someone else’s point of view helps develop their ability to analyze situations from different perspectives.” The article also discusses how role-playing helps a child explore and understand emotions.  Singing about emotions is a safe and appropriate way to learn about being, sad, frustrated, angry, etc. and also about happiness, fun, and love, etc.

Kindermusik’s home materials offer your child a chance to pretend play and explore emotion every day.  To help them explore and understand emotions have them sing songs showing different emotions with their faces and through their voices.  Encourage them to change the words to the song to better communicate emotion and give the song additional meaning.  You can also use musical play to help develop creativity. You are improving your child’s problem-solving abilities every time you help them explore an instrument or the various sounds an object can make, (What is another way you can play the sticks? While driving in the car, your children can explore the different types of body percussion they can produce. Make sure they explore making quiet body percussion or they might drive you crazy!)  Many Kindermusik songs naturally encourage role playing with movement, (How else can you move like a monkey?) When we explore props in class we’re always trying to figure out new ways to use the prop, (What else could this hoop be, how else could you move it?).  Participation in Kindermusik fosters the development of creativity, problem solving, and emotional understanding!  

To read the actual article click HERE.  (It’s a bit long but has some points worth thinking about.)

Our Time! Edible Crab Craft

We had so much fun today making an edible crab in Creatures of the Ocean today.  I wanted to share the idea on my blog.  You can down load the crab song HERE

Beat Acquisition: Help your children learn to find and move to the beat.  Clapping to the beat, patting the beat on your legs, and moving to the beat are all different skills.  Children will learn to find the beat faster if you pat it on their back or sway with them to the beat.  You want their whole body, not just their hands to feel the beat. Be patient, it can take a long time to learn to keep a steady beat.  Most children learn to keep a steady beat somewhere between the ages of 4 and 7.  Beat acquisition is a great asset in athletic pursuits. It is part of body-kinesthetic and spatial learning. Most all learning involves patterns and you have to understand beat before you can see a pattern.  Import learning pathways are laid in the brain as a child learns to feel and move to a steady beat.  

Using musical play to enhance your child’s development!

Inner Hearing: Inner hearing is an important part of musicianship.  A musician needs to be able to hear, in his head, what a song and note should sound like without actually singing or playing.   Inner Hearing is a skill that takes time and practice to develop.  Play games where you and your children only sing certain words in a song and see if you can stay together. (Songs like Bingo)  You can choose to sing whole songs in your head except a few key words to see if your staying together. This is a great activity to keep you all entertained in the car.  If you sing quietly you can even use the activity in the grocery store line and the doctors office. While participating in this activity, your children are also learning self-control. You must be able to hear songs in your head to sing rounds and sing harmony.  Start with rhythm rounds where you each clap different rhythms and progress to singing rounds.   

Pictures!

We just finished our ZOO TRAIN unit and ADVENTURES AROUND THE WORLD!  Here are a few photo highlights.  To see all the photos I've taken click Here.  The username is kindermusikmm and the password is imagineartsstudio.

This summer my blog will feature 8 ways you can use musical play to enhance your child’s development! 

Singing:  The first instrument a child can master is his or her own voice.  It is through singing that children develop their sense of pitch.  Be careful having children sing songs with jazzed up accompaniments.  A young child’s untrained ear has a hard time knowing which, of the many pitches they are hearing, is the right pitch to sing.  Stick to simple folk songs with simple accompaniments for singing.  Singing acapella is wonderful.  Sing books to your children.  To help strengthen the coordination between the brain hemispheres have your children make up their own words to songs, try to vary the tempo and dynamics of your singing.  Help your child learn to color their language by conveying emotion through how they sing. Explore singing loud, soft, happy, sad, etc.  You can also help them build their musical vocabulary by using words like forte and pianissimo, rather than loud and soft, or legato and staccato in place of smooth and bumpy.  When they are angry or excited see if you can get them to sing their emotions to you.  You can try it too.  It's a great way to help diffuse anger or frustration and help improve communicate.  When my children were younger, I found that singing instructions or directions really made them stop and listen to what I was saying. 

This summer my blog will feature 8 ways you can use musical play to enhance your child’s development! 

Sound Discrimination:  Hearing and listening are not the same thing.  Active focused listening is a skill that benefits children in many ways.  A good listener follows instructions better, develops reading and math skills more easily, and has enhanced social understanding.  We can help our children learn to be better listeners by practicing listening.  Play games where children focus on all the sounds around them.  Instead of playing “I SPY” play I “HEAR”. You’ll be surprised at all the different sounds going on around you.  This is a great game for the car or standing in line at the grocery store.  Here is a link for sound bingo game that you can use at home to help your children learn to listen.  For your sound bingo game click HERE.

The Magic of Music Week 15 FOL

I've so enjoyed our Kindermusik semester and will miss all of you with my move to Katy, Texas. Continue to make music a daily part of your child's life. The processes of making music enhances your child's development. Musical play engages all the different learning centers your in child’s brain. As these center work together making music the the pathways and connections between these sections of the brain and the brain hemispheres are strengthened. Strong connections make it easier your child to think, reason, and learn. Making music also helps your child develop socially and emotionally. Music gives them another avenue to experience, explore, and express emotion. Making music, especially in a group, requires a child to learn self-control, cooperation, and other important social skills! But the greatest thing about musical play is it's fun and helps create wonderful childhood memories. One of the greatest compliments I ever received was from my daughter when she returned from college one summer. She said to me, "Mom, as I talk to other people about there childhood I realize what a gift you gave me with all the singing and dancing we did at home. The way you used music in our home made my childhood magical." Keep your home full of the magic of music! (Thanks for the pictures Christina!)

Fun Music Site!

Just found a wonderful internet site. This site gives pictures of all the orchestra instruments and recordings of the sound each instrument makes. It would be fun to explore with your children. http://www.musictechteacher.com/quiz_help_instrument.htm

Week 14 FOL

Vocal Expression: For some children learning to perform in front of other people and express their ideas is challenging. When children engage in creative vocal play, like making animal sounds, car sounds, or sounds of movement, they are learning to be vocally expressive. This helps them gain confidence in their own voice and in front of people. Encourage your children to make appropriate sounds in their day to day activities. When pushing them in a swing make a vocal swooping and sliding sound going from high to low. This will help infants in their language acquisition. In our older classes we play games that allow children a chance to echo a phrase of a song helping them gain confidence in their singing ability.

Week 13 FOL

Musical Cues: In many of our circle dances children have to listen to the changing musical form to know what they are supposed to do. This helps children learn to listen and follow directions and to distinguish between the different patterns in a selection of music. These skills will also help them in reading and mathematics.

Rhythmic Complexity: Week 12 FOL

A child’s first exposure to rhythm is in the womb as she feels and hears her mother’s heart beat. After birth she hears her own heart beat. African and Indian music traditions have brought syncopation and other rhythmic complexities to our ears, weaving these rhythms into current Western culture. As children are exposed to a variety of different rhythmic patterns they develop their abilities to listen and produce these rhythms more easily. This aids them in formal music study and in the development of their large and fine motor skills. Children with a good sense of beat and rhythm are more coordinated athletes and dancers.

Loud & Soft: Week 11 FOL

Self control is a learned behavior. Children need to practice making a conscious choice to be quiet. Musical play is a great way to practice self control through experiencing the concepts of loud soft sounds. These concepts are experienced through playing loudly then softly, singing loudly then softly, and then hearing the difference between the loud and soft. Children can also move in loud and quiet ways. Next time you need your child to be quiet instead of just shushing him, try giving him a tangible quiet sound to make like rubbing his hands together or walking very quietly.

Spring Break Reminder! No Kindermusik classes March 15th-March 20th!

Language Development & Syntax: Week 10 FOL

The way a word is said and the context in which it is used gives a word additional meaning. Music helps a child learn to more effectively communicate and understand the meaning of language. Through musical play children learn the difference and use of loud, soft, fast, slow, etc. These are skills that allow them to more effectively color words to communicate a specific meaning. Music also helps build vocabulary. Not only are the songs we sing exposing children to new words but the words we use to explain movement enhance their descriptive vocabulary. For example, in Kindermusik we don’t just turn, we twirl, whirl, swoop, swish, etc. Music is a fun way to help a child understand the subtle meaning of language.

Rocking: Week 9 FOL

Rocking has many benefits for the infant and young child. It soothes, provides rhythmic motion, promotes muscular strength, control, balance and helps develop lateralization. Lateralization is a fancy term meaning the coordination between the right and left sides of the body. Rocking also helps a child learn to feel and keep a steady beat. Children need to be able to keep a steady beat to run well, play a musical instrument, and even to cut efficiently with scissors, so rock away! (The Infant and Toddler Handbook, Kathryn Castle, Ed.D. )

Great Sources for Instruments!

I’ve had several parents ask me about good sources for instruments at home. Of course there is always Kindermusik International, http://www.kindermusik.com/Shop/Shop.aspx, but you can also check out: http://www.beyondplay.com, http://www.DiscountSchoolSupply.com/, http://www.empire-music.com, http://larkinthemorning.com, http://www.WestMusic.com.

Buying instruments for your child to play with at home is a great idea. If you purchase instruments I suggest that you don’t leave them out all the time. Give your child a special time or times each day to pull them out and play with them. During their “music time,” play their Kindermusik CD. You’ll enjoy watching all the ways your child plays music.

Miss Mindy's March Music Note: SINGING

Week 8 FOL

Children's spontaneous singing is a delight to hear. As children sing they are learning both rhythmic and melodic patterns and developing an understanding of the meaning and coloring of language. Although some children can match pitches from toddlerhood, most children need many singing experience over a long period of time to develop this skill.

Children have a limited vocal range. D to A is the beginning range for childhood singing. Young children often can’t distinguish between vocal sounds and instrumental sounds. This is why most of the songs we sing in class are sung a cappella. Use your CD’s at home, but also sing the songs a cappella with your child. It is great to adapt songs to the different activities you do with your child at home. When you sing with your child, use a natural almost speaking quality voice.

The first pitch interval that children can learn to master is the sol-mi interval. (Some of you may know this as the 5-3 interval or if you’re playing a C major scale, it is the interval from G down to E.) The next note we add is La. The me-sol-la interval is called the tritonic interval, (3-5-6 or in a c major scale it’s E,G,A). From here we move to the major pentatonic or 5 note scale, do, re, me, so, la, (1,2,3,5,6, or in a C major scale C,D,E,G,A).

To help your children learn to sing on pitch, pick a note and sing it, then have them sing it with you. A good note to start with is G. You can sing, la, la, la, or if you want to teach them solfege sing “sol”, you could also sing there name or a favorite toy. Don’t stress if they can’t match the pitch it takes practice. Just like learning to speak it comes bit by bit. Helping them learn to sing on pitch should be fun and only done for short periods of time. Make it play!

Once a child can match your initial pitch, sing down a third (sol-me, or 5-3 interval). This is an easy interval for a child to learn. The childhood taunt of na,na,na,na, is sung using this interval. Once your child can sing the sol-me interval you add “la”, (sol-me-la or 5-3-6). This is the intervals used in “Rain, rain, go away, come again another day.” To build accurate pitch singing stick with just these three intervals until your child has them mastered. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t expose them to the full 8 note major scale, or other modes and scales. Exposure to more complicated musical patterns will be an asset to future learning, however, for developing the skill of accurate pitch singing, start simple with just the sol-me-la interval. (For more specifics see below under Imagine That.)

How We Do This in Kindermusik!

Village: Our new Kindermusik unit, Rhythm of My Day, has a specific song that we’ll be sing to the babies using just the sol-mi interval. The song and activities with the song will allow the babies to focus on this simple interval and give them a starting point for accurate pitch matching.

Our Time: Most all the Our Time songs primarily use the sol,ma,la interval sprinkling in do and re. As the class progresses we’ll be working on pitch matching activities. Because these activities are best done one on one, they will be part of our gathering time before class formally begins. Our “Good Bye” song has the children echoing the sol-me interval as we sing, “good bye”. Singing the simple Our Time songs a cappella at home with your child will help them develop accurate pitch singing skills.

Imagine That: Singing games are the foundation of Imagine That. As we’ve been sailing on the ocean the children have played a game similar to duck, duck, goose, where they have to echo back the phrases of the song. They think they are playing a game and don’t know that they are building their ability to sing solo in front of others. Each section of the curriculum has a song to help the children master the sol-me-la interval. Right now some of them can sing the intervals accurately some cannot. The “What do Toys like to do all Day,” song taught the sol-me interval. The sol-me-la interval was taught with, “What do you See”. To help the children feel the pitch changes I use a long rope. For “sol” we jump on the actual rope, for “me” we jump backwards off the rope and for “la” we jump in front of or over the rope. In Kindermusik Young Child this jumping activity will lead to actual written notation. To help your child learn to sing accurately work with them on matching the “G” pitch then have them move from “G” to “E”. Here is an example of how you could do this. As your cutting up and apple for your child to eat, sing apple on the “G” pitch. Encourage your child to sing with you. If they are matching your pitch, sing apple moving from “G” to “E” on the syllable break. Once they can sing the sol-me interval (G to E) add in la “A”. For example you could sing, “apple crunchy, yum, yum, yum,” using the notes G,E, (apple) A, E, (crunchy) G,G,E (yum, yum, yum). If your child can’t match the pitch don’t worry it will come with time and practice. Only practice for short periods of time and make it fun. Children love to sing funny or silly words. This also will help build phonological awareness. Remember, when you sing with your child, use a natural almost speaking quality voice.

Week 7 FOL: Learning Integration

Learning and development are not compartmentalized but integrated. What happens in one area of the brain affects and influences the other areas much like a domino effect. One of the wonderful things about musical play is that it has a domino effect in so many areas of the brain. In our Kindermusik class the focus of a particular activity might be singing; however, development in many other areas is taking place such as: steady beat, expressive movement, pretend play, instrument play, social interaction, problem solving, patterning, as well as language and speech development.

Week 6 FOL: Major, Minor, & Modes

Each Kindermusik curriculum contains songs composed in a variety of tonalities and modes. The musical scale is composed of a set pattern of pitches using whole and half note steps. Major and Minor scales and each different musical mode use a different pattern of pitches in the scale. Each of these tonalities is like a different set of musical flavors and presents a different set of musical patterns for the child’s brain to process. Exposing children to a wide diversity of musical tones and modes will make it easier for them to recognize and sing musical patterns as they grow older. Much of the music we are familiar with in the Western culture is written using the major or minor scale. However a lot of folk music and Celtic music uses the Dorian mode. Experiencing patterns in music and in movement help the child’s brain later learn to identify patterns in math and language.

Kindermusik’s New Emusic Site

You can now download your favorite kindermusik musik at: http://play.kindermusik.com/ Once you register and login you can down load your class music as mp3 files for free! Use the ISBN number on one of the class story books as your class code. You also get 10 free music downloads. It's a great way to get electronic music files for your family!

February's Music Note, Week 5 FOL

Phonological Awareness, What is it?

Long before your child can tell you that the magnetic letter “m” on your refrigerator stands for the /m/ sound, he or she is building sensitivity to the sounds of spoken language. Researchers call this phonological awareness, or “a general appreciation of the sounds of speech, as distinct from their meaning.” Phonological awareness is a very important step in the journey to learning to read. In fact, a child’s level of sound awareness upon entering school “may be the single most powerful determinant of the success he or she will experience in learning to read.” Academic research has proven that the playful experiences a parent has with a young toddler can have a significant impact on that child’s level of phonological awareness later.

From the perspective of a parent, however, phonological awareness crops up most prominently in a few ways.

It begins with an awareness of the spoken contours of speech (for example, using rising pitch to signal a question).

It continues as children begin to notice syllables and sounds within words (for example, “number” can be divided into two chunks: num- and -ber).

The next step is rhyming. Early experiences recognizing, repeating, and predicting rhymes are a perfect and age-appropriate way to build phonological sensitivity.

Developmental Milestones: Phonological Awareness

By the age of three, your child will most likely be able to: Repeat e-i-e-i-o or other favorite song lyrics.

Notice repeating sounds, such as buh in bumble bee.

Fill in rhyming words in a predictable song.

Repeat words with certain sounds, i.e, hop, hop, hop!

Music is a great way to stimulate awareness of syllables, rhyming, and changes in intonation. In fact, brain studies of eight-year-old children, amazingly, show that children who started musical training at the age of four or five are better at processing the pitch changes within spoken language than similar children without musical training.

How It Works in a Kindermusik Class

Word Play: The often silly, often rhyming, and always engaging rhymes, poems, and song lyrics featured in Kindermusik classes give your child a chance to speak and sing, practicing rhyming, word play, and predicting skills.

Sound Play: They don’t just learn from words! Sounds and syllables, even nonsense ones, are enough to get your child’s language brain cells “buzzzzing”.

Vocal Play: You and your child get to really see what your voices can do. Using voices to make high and low sounds, “smooth” and “bumpy” sounds, the sounds of animals, water running, popcorn popping, you name it—it all adds up to more awareness of sounds, how to make them, and how they can come together to build words.

What You Can Do at Home

Clap to the Beat: Help your child tune in to the rhythms of spoken words by clapping along with favorite nursery rhymes.

Big Bad Bug: Stringing together words that begin with the same sound (yellow, ukulele, yahoo), end with the same sound (kitten, mitten, written), or have other things in common expands your child’s collection of familiar phonemes.

Rhyme Time: Together, build strings of rhyming words (they don’t have to be “real” words—the goal is to explore the sounds, not the meanings of words). Start with simple, singlesyllable words, but challenge yourselves to build as long a list as you can (i.e., bat, cat, dat, fat, gat, hat, jat . . . ).

Get Silly With Sounds: Easy and fun—start tossing silly rhymes into your everyday routines. Try See you later, alligator!, Ready, Freddy?, or even Time for lunchy-munchy!

(Informatin in this post comes from On the Path to Readying by Suzanne I. Barchers, Ed.D., Heidi Gilman Bennett)

In Imagine That (ages 3 to 5) we built an imaginary BIG BLUE BOAT! Then we read a book and sang songs about sailing on our Big Blue Boat.

Week 4, Foundations of Learning

Musical activities and reading books with expression and associated activities, help children develop a deeper and fuller mastery of language. Everything we do in our Kindermusik classes helps children develop both their musical and linguistic skills. (Magic Trees of the Mind by Marian Diamond & Janet Hopson)

Week 3 Foundation of Learning

Body Control: In Kindermusik we use music and movement play to help your child learn body control. During movement activities children "learn to organize the available space in relationship to themselves and in relationship to objects and other individuals....they are developing body control and confidence in the power and ability of their own bodies." The Creative Arts, by Linda Carol Edwards

Imagine That Homework!

Toilet Paper Roll Shaker

Have your child decorate a toilet paper roll. (Picture 1)

After the roll is decorated staple one end of the roll. (Picture 2)

After stapling drop a FEW beans, pieces of rice, dried corn, etc. into the roll. (Picture 3)

Then staple the roll the opposite way as shown in the picture. (Picture 4)

Now SHAKE! SHAKE! SHAKE!

To expand your child’s learning you can make several shakers and put different items and different amounts of items into various shakers. Then help your child compare the different sounds that the various shakers make. Help them draw conclusion about how the type of items and amount of items effect the sounds the shakers make.

Week 2, Foundation of Learning

Village

Speech: Infants learns to speak from watching the mouths of parents and other care givers. Language heard through other media is too quick and fleeting for the child to associate mouth movement with sound. You’re child needs to hear and see you speak and sing. The greater the frequency and variety of sounds and words you use in caring for your child the greater his or her ability is to understand and learn to speak. Singing often and directly to your child is great way to help your child hear and understand language. From Simple Steps by Karen Miller.

Our Time

Repetition: As a baby or child practices a favorite activity they are actually helping their brain grow. Growth and development of the child from birth to seven years old, takes place primarily through the child’s movement and touch experiences. Repetition aids in solidifying the pathways in the brain that are formed and reinforced through touch and movement activities. The child enjoys and needs to experience activities over and over and over and over again to form and reinforce links and pathways in the brain that the child will use in future learning.

Imagine That

Active Listening: There is a difference between hearing and listening. Children have to be taught to listen. Listening is a process that stretches beyond the physical act of hearing and involves intellectual and emotional processing. It requires the listener to listen with ears, mind, and heart to understand what is being communicated. Active listening is done through interaction and is vital to learning. In Imagine That we are developing our active listening skills by listening to and imitating different types of drums. Your at home activity guild has information about the various drums we are listening to and imitating in class.

In our Toy shop imagination journey we pretended to be tops this week. Here is a video of the children pretending to be a spinning top!

Foundation of Learning statements or FOL’s explain “why” we do “what we do” in the Kindermusik classroom. Each week my blog will highlight an FOL and how class activities relate to that FOL. Most activities relate to several FOLs. If you want more information on a particular FOL, please ask me for a more detailed explanation!

Kindermusik Spring Semester, Week 1

Village, Vestibular Stimulation and Touch

Infants and toddlers learn from movement and touch. It is through repeated touch sensations that young infants discover their bodies. Touch sensations, along with the vestibular system, work together to teach baby his relationship to everything around him. An understanding of the world, and a sense of balance and coordination, is enhanced through a variety of movement experience. As a child grows up, he is much more competent with his ability to move and try new physically related activities when he has experience a wide variety of movement experiences as an infant.

It is through touch and the vestibular system that a child starts to understand and categorize the many sensory experience that are part of his day. The auditory system and vestibular system work together and are both centered in the ear. The vestibular system is stimulated and learns as a child is moved in a variety of different ways. As the vestibular system develops a child is better able to differentiate between various sounds in the environment and language.

In class we touch the children in ways that might not be part of their normal routine. We also explore the many ways to hold and move with our children that aren’t usually part of ever day care. Our goal is to learn to incorporate a wide variety of touch and movement activities into our child’s everyday routine.

Our Time, Musical Improvisation and Personalization

When children use music as a means of personal expression and communication all the learning centers in brain work together. Music’s greatest powers lie in helping the child learn to use music as a means of personal expression. In class when children make their own movement choices we are helping them learn to communicate through music. For example when we sing the “Our Time Welcome Song” and we ask Izzy what movement she want us to sing for her and she bounce up and down she is communicating that she want us to sing, “It’s our time to Jump with Izzy……..” In so doing she has just had all the learning centers in her brain work together to communicate her desires to us. Through this process she is laying pathways in the brain that will help her with a wide variety of future learning. In class we are always trying to encourage children to personalize our music activities by making their own movement and word choices. At home make up words to tunes you know to communicate with your child. Encourage your child to sing and make up their own songs as they play, this type of improvisation is wonderful for your child’s developing brain.

Imagine That, Pretend Play

Our entire Image That semester is built around pretending to visit a Toy Shop that has no toys. One by one we meet the various toys that the Toy Maker builds and with these toys we travel and explore the world. While class activities do develop specific musical skill, the overall theme of the class lays a foundation for language and literary development. “Various studies have linked pretend play with language and literacy development. These studies further suggested that fantasy play incorporates aspects of adult speech as well as the opportunity for children to increase their vocabulary as they create themes and scripts and communicate these ideas to each other.” (Early Childhood Education: Blending Theory, Blending Practice, Johnson, LaMontagne, Elgas, bauer, pp.114-115.) Our whole Image That semester is designed to do exactly that. Together the children and I will create our own personalized story.