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