I want to thank all of you for the great Family Time session we have just had. I enjoyed each family and each child.

We have many camps offered this summer. We have a Family Time camp and camps for the individual age groups. We are limiting registration to our current and former families until April 27. After that we will open it up to the general public. The camps are already filling fast.

The camps meet once a week for 6 weeks. That includes a make-up week. We take the week of July 4^th off.

I hope to see all of you at the Flint Children’s Museum on June 6!

Thanks again for a great semester!

SuzAnne

This week we had fun making our own music in family ensembles. The children did very well following me. For the most part they played the appropriate instruments at the right time. When they chose to play a different instrument from the one I had, they still watched and kept a steady beat.

One day, these children may want to participate in a team sport or play in a band. Kindermusik provides them with the opportunity to develop and practice skills that are required to perform in an ensemble, such as distinguishing between sounds, listening for the appropriate entrance, timing the participation, accomplishing the steady-beat play with an outside sound source, and playing with others.

Next week we will be our last Family Time class. I will be sending a note out as soon as the summer camp schedule is posted. We have a full line-up of summer camps for all ages and for Family Time.

Have a great week,

SuzAnne

Making music together is powerful! Lessons 9 & 10 will focus on music ensembles, two or more playing or singing together. Cultures all around the world value the experience of ensemble, in all kinds of forms—drumming circles, marching bands, folk sing-a-longs, and symphony orchestras each offering their own unique musical experience.

In Family Time, we’ve made music together, and participated in the creation of many ensemble experiences. What more natural ensemble than a family and the community around it? We played resonator bars in an instrumental ensemble during “I Like to Sing.”

You can enjoy a "Kitchen Ensemble" this week at home. Get out some wooden spoons, pots, bowls, or other kitchen items along with your Kindermusik CD. Enjoy playing together but don’t forget to give everyone a solo-part, too. Why not try a "Bathtub Ensemble" or a "Bedtime Ensemble" as well?

Have a good week!

SuzAnne

 Have you noticed each week that we are enjoying familiar activities in new ways? Last week we played sticks, bells, and egg shakers at just the right time to the recording “We are Fine Musicians.” This week we pretended to play the instruments featured on this same recording. Repetition of something familiar along with a new twist strengthens the development of your child’s brain.

“We Are Fine Musicians,” on your Home CD, will quickly become a family favorite! Bring Kindermusik home this week and find new ways to experience this song. Your older child might enjoy finding pictures of instrument families on the computer. Or, turn those left over boxes into instrument art projects—make a cardboard guitar or trumpet. Your toddler is on the move! So funnel that need to move into an energetic motion that goes along to the sound of a specific instrument—instrument aerobics for toddlers. You’ll be tuning ears as well as bodies!

 We were fine musicians this week as we saw pictures of the instrument families, listened to instruments from different families, played instruments, and moved in different ways—matching the music played by instruments from various families. Instruments come in families and that’s our music focus for Lessons 7 and 8.

There are many ways to classify or group instruments together. In Make Way for Music, we’ll find out about the string family (violin, guitar), the percussion family (drum, xylophone), the brass family (trumpet, trombone), the woodwind family (flute, clarinet), and keyboard instruments (piano, organ).

Take Kindermusik home with these ideas:

• Sharpen those ears and go on an instrument listening hunt. Let your ears find as many instruments as you can in TV shows, videos, or on the radio.
• Take advantage of inexpensive concerts throughout the year—high school, community band, or college band rehearsals or concerts.
• Gather together all the instruments that you have at home for a Family Jam with your favorite Kindermusik CD.

Just a reminder, if any of you have an instrument at home that you could bring in and share with us next week, that would be great. If you would like to demonstrate the instrument for us, that would be great, too. (But if it’s been years and you’d rather not, we can just show it!)

We will be learning the Easter signs in the next few weeks. Please help out by dropping me an e-mail of any Easter signs (religious or secular) you would like to know. If anyone would like Passover signs, please let me know those as well.

I will be adding some Family Fun ideas for Easter on the blog soon. And again if someone has some Passover fun they’d like to share, I’d be glad to post it.

See you Monday,

SuzAnne

Isn’t singing fun! As I enjoyed your families this week, I was reminded how naturally children and music fit together. Listening to your “whoo-whooo” train sounds with “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad” and singing like cuckoos and chickadees to “Birds’ Chorus” were my two highlights of this week’s lesson.

“Singing is related to the ability to control speech fluctuations, and speech activities appear to help develop tuneful singing skills. Playing with rhythmic speech (poems, rhymes, etc.) as well as simple tonal melodies help children develop both singing and speech skills.” Quote taken from: McDonald, Dorothy T., and Gene M. Simons. Musical Growth and Development: Birth through Six. New York: Schirmer Books, 1988.

Your voice can be a strong parenting tool. Here are a few ideas to take home:

• Need to get your children’s attention? Try whispering. The sudden contrast between your speaking voice and whispering voice will interest their ears. If they respond with a whisper, enjoy a whisper conversation!
• Sing your way from playtime to wash-up. Change the words of a familiar song to make an otherwise dreaded time into a pleasant experience! (Example: Tune-“Row, Row, Row Your Boat”; “Wash, wash, wash your hands; Make them squeaky clean! Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily; life is but a dream!”)

I’m also posting a video of a chickadee feeding its’ young. I hope the children enjoy it.

See you next week!

“Sing, sing a song…”— nothing is more beautiful than families singing together! The music focus for Lessons 5 and 6 is all about our voices. In class we played with our voices—whispering, speaking, singing, and making other neat sounds!

Our voices do so much for us every day—communicating information or emotion, making sounds of surprise or delight, and much more! As “our first instrument,” the human voice has amazing possibilities in speech and singing. One of your child’s first responses to a musical experience were vocal sounds—babblings, cooing, and the like. With time, experience, and practice comes a control over those sounds—resulting in matching pitch, singing alone or with others, and singing with or without accompaniment.

Families that sing together have fun together!

• How many songs does your family know? Make a long drive shorter with a Family Singing Marathon. Someone keep record of the number of songs and minutes for the next time.
• Tired of waiting in the check-out or drive through line? Sing a song.
• Pass a song. Make up family rules so every member of the family gets a turn to sing part of a familiar song.

See you next week!

All the fun of singing and musical play doesn’t have to stay in the classroom—take it with you where ever your family might happen to be. Adding Kindermusik activities into your daily routines will reinforce the learning that takes place in the class. The more familiar your children are with these activities, the more comfortable they will be in the classroom.

“From infancy on, children count on rituals and routines for comfort and security. Routines comfort children and serve as cues for what is expected of them, giving children a sense of control over their environment. When a child knows what will happen next and what is expected of him, he will be better able to participate and to act independently, which is an important developmental step.” Quote taken from: Poole, Carla. “Routine Matters.” Parent & Child, August/September 1998.

Take Kindermusik home with these ideas:

• Choose a favorite song as a daily wake-up song.
• Pick a familiar song and give it new words for an end-of-the-meal family sing along.
• Suds-up with a song for a musical bath time.
• End the day with a lulling goodnight song.

Have a musical week!

A snapshot of this week’s lesson: tippy-tippy toes and stretched fingers reaching up soooo high and then crouched bottoms bending down as low as possible! This week the focus was on musical concepts, where we found extreme contrasts of highs and lows, as well as smooth & bumpy, and loud & quiet.

Most of the time, we sing in a very predictable way. What if we tried something different? Singing a favorite tune a different way—like bumpy and smooth, or loud then soft—can give any song renewed energy and interest. When children have the opportunity to experience new concepts through extreme contrast, awareness and understanding of these concepts are heightened.

Take the high and low listening game on the road! While in the car, play your favorite recording and see who can find the high and low parts of the song. Change it up with finding fast and slow sections. This game can be played without the CD—sing your favorite family song quickly, then slowly. We’ll share more concepts and contrasts together next week.

See you then!

Hi Everyone!

Already we’ve had a good time exploring beat and rhythm, our first theme of this unit. Children who can feel and express beat posses basic timing. Basic timing is a fundamental skill that many children acquire before entering kindergarten or first grade. "Being skilled in basis timing means possessing beat awareness (being able to accurately feel and indicate beat in nonlocomotor ways) and possessing beat competency (being able to match the beat by walking to it)." Children who have basic timing at an early age have a head start in at least three important areas of development: motor skills, musical skills, and academic skills  (Weikart and Boardman 1990).

One of Kindermusik’s sayings is "We are so much more than music." This is very true. The study of music still benefit your child in so many ways.

Please remember to bring your drums to class tomorrow.

SuzAnne