Title: WinterSpring 2010 Schedule
Link: http://gotaf.socialtwist.com/redirect?l=-302732930593428521121

Early Registration through December 19th, $10.00 holds your spot!

Kindermusik International is sponsoring a competition to help you win a FREE Semester of Kindermusik! Just go to the link here and follow the instructions to download our special Itsy Bitsy Spider MP3 by Molly McGinn and make a video of your special moves to the song… To compete you will join ‘The Kindermusik Experience’ group on You Tube and download your video!

Mom and Baby making music!

Recently this article about the seven benefits of music education was brought to my attention again by Fellow Kindermusik educator Aimee Carter. Aimee shared, “I found it interesting, because it was not talking specifically about private music study or school age children. As a matter of fact, I see these same benefits every week in my Kindermusik classroom, even when it’s full of little babies! Music education enhances a child’s intelligence, academic success, social skills, and even physical fitness.” Aimee is right and this is so true of my Kindermusik classes too!

Here are the seven surprising benefits of music education:

Music boosts brain power.

Music leads to literacy skills.

Music adds to a child’s understanding of math.

Music helps children live in harmony with others.

Music is active.

Singing helps children stay strong.

Music supports self-expression.

Please take a minute to read the full article here.

See my previous post here.

Steve Blunt with children

Recently I received a link to an article by Steve Blunt. (Thank you Merri!) He was writing on the importance of Music to Literacy and what he had to say hit the nail square on the head! I have seen time and again this same phenomenon in my Kindermusik classes. 

Steve Blunt is an award-winning kids’ musician from New Hampshire. A former middle-school English teacher, Steve now works as a music teacher and performer. His music gets kids up and dancing and he always encourages the adults to sing along. In this article he discusses the importance of music in the classroom. Music is both fun AND educational!

“If we value literacy—speaking, listening, reading, and writing—then we should acknowledge that age-appropriate musical activity lays a foundation for subsequent language development.”

Read more here.

In the latest edition of Earlychildhood NEWSlink an article summarizing a study by researchers at Temple University and the University of Delaware states, “American infants and toddlers watch TV an average of two hours a day, and much of the programming is billed as educational. A new study finds that children under age 3 learn less from these videos than we might think — unless there’s an adult present to interact with them and support their learning.

The study, by researchers at Temple University and the University of Delaware, can be found in the September/October 2009 issue of the journal Child Development.

The researchers studied children who ranged in age from 30 to 42 months to explore whether they could learn the names of actions (verbs) from videos. The names of verbs are generally harder for children to learn than names of objects. Yet verb learning is critical because verbs are the centerpiece of sentences, the glue that holds the words together…” (read more here).

Again, we see a study that points to the importance and effectiveness of interaction with our children, from the youngest ages. It is so important parents to be a part of what your young child is learning. You are your child’s most important teacher and in the Kindermusik classroom you are affirmed as that. The teacher is the facilitator and your teacher so that you may ‘teach’ your child by your involvement. “Loving your child is what it’s all about!” Learn more here!

Merri Williams, fellow Kindermusik Educator and friend shared this very interesting article and I must do the same!

How Arts Training Improves Attention and Cognition
By Michael I. Posner, Ph.D., and Brenda Patoine
Does education in the arts transfer to seemingly unrelated cognitive abilities? Researchers are finding evidence that it does. Michael Posner argues that when children find an art form that sustains their interest, the subsequent strengthening of their brains’ attention networks can improve cognition more broadly.

If there were a surefire way to improve your brain, would you try it? Judging by the abundance of products, programs and pills that claim to offer “cognitive enhancement,” many people are lining up for just such quick brain fixes. Recent research offers a possibility with much better, science-based support: that focused training in any of the arts—such as music, dance or theater—strengthens the brain’s attention system, which in turn can improve cognition more generally. Furthermore, this strengthening likely helps explain the effects of arts training on the brain and cognitive performance that have been reported in several scientific studies, such as those presented in May 2009 at a neuroeducation summit at Johns Hopkins University (co-sponsored by the Dana Foundation). (read more)

Playing the resonator bars.

In a report from researchers at the FPG Child Development Institute in Chapel Hill, NC, Yazejian and Peisner-Feinberg (2002) state:

Music and movement experiences are often viewed as secondary to activities and material linked more directly with the development of language and cognitive skills — skills associated with conventional definitions of school readiness. Recent research, however, suggests that music and movement experience can promote these broader developmental competencies as well.

Research is now establishing the link between music education and school readiness, defined by the National Education Goals Panel across the following developmental domains:

1. Physical Well-Being and Motor Development – As some of childhood’s most active learning, music and movement activities promote fine motor skills as found in finger games, large motor skills as in dancing and marching to music, as well as the sensorimotor, eye-hand coordination skills required in playing small instruments.

2. Social-Emotional Development … (read more)

Link to Attacked 911 tribute

Eurekalert reported today that a UCLA study finds that activities that get children 2 months to 48 months talking are most conducive to language acquisition.

Adult-child conversations have a more significant impact on language development than exposing children to language through one-on-one reading alone, according to a new study in the July issue of Pediatrics, the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

“Pediatricians and others have encouraged parents to provide language input through reading, storytelling and simple narration of daily events,” explains study’s lead author, Dr. Frederick J. Zimmerman, associate professor in the Department of Health Services in the UCLA School of Public Health. “Although sound advice, this form of input may not place enough emphasis on children’s role in language-based exchanges and the importance of getting children to speak as much as possible.” (read more)

Activities like Kindermusik that encourage children to respond in class and to their parents are a great example of the give and take that this study is discussing. To acquire the knowledge a child must be actively involved in language and language type activities. What better avenue than a musical one that impacts even greater development and skill! “Loving your child is what it’s all about!”

What do Froebel, Pestalozzi, Montessori, and Rudolph Steiner have in common? Many of us recognize them as significant contributors to the child-centered approach to early childhood education, but what we may not realize is that they were also pioneers in the holistic education movement and believed that education should contribute to the spiritual development of children. They all viewed the young child as more than just a growing body and mind. They saw a spiritual dimension to human development as well.

…While the educational theories of Froebel, Pestalozzi, Montessori, and Steiner all reflect, to varying degrees, a spiritual framework, most of us are uncomfortable about openly expressing a commitment to spiritual development in our curriculum. This discomfort may be prompted, in part, by a fuzzy idea of what we mean by spirit and spiritual. To some people, making spiritual development a part of the curriculum suggests the teaching of religion. Fostering the spiritual development of children, however, need not involve religion at all. Spiritual development in its most basic form means development of the spirit, or the animating principle of our being. Spirit, in this sense, is often defined as the nonmaterial part of humans, in contrast to the body, which represents the material aspect of who we are. The word soul is sometimes used as a synonym for spirit, especially when used in the context of “body and soul.”

The meaning of spirit or spiritual development, as advocated in this article, differs from the religious definitions. It also differs from ethics and moral development. (read more)

Kindermusik is a Music and Movement program designed to teach music while stimulating both right and left brain, while social, emotional, cognitive, physical, language and literacy skills are all highlighted. Kindermusik is a Whole Child, Whole Brain curriculum. It is also a spirit filled curriculum, for it is by the nature of ‘being a child’ that spirit is cultivated. Kindermusik fills each child with an ‘abundance of themselves’ through all the activities in the classroom and through the relationships that are created and maintained. Kindermusik educators are instructed to ‘follow the child’ in our classrooms. We do just that, as it is then that your child will learn the most and in the manner that they need.

Check out Kindermusik, “Loving your child is what it’s all about!”

Fun in Kindermusik Around the World