Teeny Halloweenies Party!

Our Halloween party happened on Saturday October 31st at our studio. We had lots of kids and grown ups   join us, and we all had a blast. There were homemade cupcakes, caramel apples and many other yoummy snacks.
Click here to see the pictures.
We can't wait for Halloween 2010!!

The Value of Music for the Little Ones

The National Association for Music Education (MENC), along with the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC), and the US Department of Education explain just how important music education can be for even the youngest children...

Nobody denies the long-term benefits of early education. But then we ask ourselves "How can a newborn baby benefit from a Kindermusik class?"
Research and common sense emphasize the importance and benefits of making music an essential part of the earliest education of young children:

1) We know that music is among the first and most important modes of communication experienced by infants.

Even though the youngest children do not yet “speak”, they understand the fundamental values of emotion created by music.

2) As young children grow and develop, music continues as a basic medium not only of communication, but of self-expression as well.

Among other things, music expands memory and vocabulary, has a great effect on reasoning skills, and strengthens logical and perceptual ideas.

3) As preschool children not only listen to and respond to music, but also learn to make music by singing and playing instruments together, they create important contexts for the early learning of vital life skills such as cooperation, collaboration, and group effort.

4) Guided music experiences also begin to teach young children to make judgments about what constitutes “good” music, thereby developing in them the rudiments of an aesthetic sense.

5) Music contributes strongly to “school readiness”…They are preparing skills that will apply to language, to literacy, and to life itself.

- excerpted from a report issued by the Early Childhood Music Summit, June 2000. Read the article in its entirety here.

09/17

“Teaching music is not my main purpose. I want to make good citizens. If children hear fine music from the day of their birth and learn to play it, they develop sensitivity, discipline and endurance. They get a beautiful heart.”

-Shinichi Suzuki, creator of the Suzuki method of music educator

09/05

“If children are not introduced to music at an early age, I believe something fundamental is actually being taken from them.”

-singer Luciano Pavarotti

09/02

“Perhaps we’ve all misunderstood the reason we learn music, and all the arts in the first place.... for hundreds of years, it has been known that teaching the arts, along with history and math and biology, helps to create the well-rounded mind that western civilization and America have been grounded on.”
-actor Richard Dreyfuss

Can't decide whether to enroll?

Take a look at what you should and should not expect at your Kindermusik class.

Watch this Kindermusik video.

Kindermusik Family Time session II begins

Kindermusik Family Time is designed for families with multiple children ages newborn to seven years old. A one-room-schoolhouse approach to music. With older children ready to show the little ones how it's done and the younger ones eager to learn, Family Time becomes a multi-layered learning environment. Your children will listen to instruments and to each other, learn from their peers and older children, and enjoy music and movement with hoops, scarves and tumble-around play. Story time and family jams, puppet play and happy singing-all the Family Time activities encourage discovery and exploration and foster sharing and social skills too. In this special place for musical, social and emotional learning, your children will strengthen their ties with each other and with you, and they'll start developing the skills they'll need in school and on the neighborhood playground.

Age Range: Newborn to 7 years
Class Structure: 5 or 10 classes/5 or 10 weeks
12 children maximum with parents/caregivers
Session II starts Monday September 21st 10:15am
Class length: 45 minutes
$196.00 (includes tuition and home materials)

Click here to enroll!

Kindermusik Family Time session I begins

Kindermusik Family Time is designed for families with multiple children ages newborn to seven years old. A one-room-schoolhouse approach to music. With older children ready to show the little ones how it's done and the younger ones eager to learn, Family Time becomes a multi-layered learning environment. Your children will listen to instruments and to each other, learn from their peers and older children, and enjoy music and movement with hoops, scarves and tumble-around play. Story time and family jams, puppet play and happy singing-all the Family Time activities encourage discovery and exploration and foster sharing and social skills too. In this special place for musical, social and emotional learning, your children will strengthen their ties with each other and with you, and they'll start developing the skills they'll need in school and on the neighborhood playground.

Age Range: Newborn to 7 years
Class Structure: 10 classes/10 weeks
12 children maximum with parents/caregivers
Session I starts Saturday September 19th 9:15am
Class length: 45 minutes
$196.00 (includes tuition and home materials)

Click here to enroll!

Kindermusik Village begins

Kindermusik Village is designed for children newborn to 18 months of age. Through a unique blend of vocal play, creative movement, object and instruments exploration, and colorful literature, Village provides the perfect environment for bonding between parent/caregiver and baby while stimulating his/her growth and development. Village incorporates the most current research on early childhood development and the benefits of early musical experiences. Family involvement in your child's learning is a fundamental cornerstone of the Kindermusik philosophy because we believe the parent is the child's most important teacher and the home is the most important place for a child's to learn.

Age Range: newborn to 18 months
Class Structure: 14 classes/14 weeks
12 babies maximum with parents/caregivers
Class length: 45 minutes
$248.00 (includes tuition and home materials)

Click here to enroll!

When can we start music lessons?

Read this article posted to the babycenter.com website to find out.

08/19

“We need to ensure that our children have both knowledge and imagination. I know I want that for my girls. They deserve to have access to a good education and access to ideas and images that will spark their creativity.”
-First Lady Michelle Obama

08/17

“An educational foundation is only part of the equation. In order for creativity to flourish and imagination to take hold, we also need to expose our children to the arts from a very young age.”
-First Lady Michelle Obama

Long term impact of music-making activities of pre-school aged children

I wanted to share this article with you as it highlights many of the long term benefits of attending a Kindermusik class.

The National Literacy Trust explores the impact of musical activities on the development of pre-school age children. Research project commissioned by Youth Music.


One of the objectives of this research is to learn about the impact that music-making activities have in the development of pre-school aged children in the long run.

Here are a few of their findings:

♫ It's easier for children to remember long sentences when these are learned accompanied by music.
♫ Children acquire an increased vocabulary; they learn new words, as well as action (wiggle, shake, stomp) and positional vocabulary (over, under, inside, outside) by learning new songs.
♫ Children acquire a better understanding of rhyming words by singing songs with words that rhyme.
♫ Children learn to actively listen and respond to instructions when in connection with musical activities.
♫ They learn to take turns and understand how conversations work by practicing "call and response" activities.
♫ Children acquire an increased ability of telling their own stories by creatively creating their own songs.


Read the entire entry here.

In addition to all these benefits, Kindermusik also allows for socialization for both children and parents.
Kindermusik classes are especially important for those who will not be enrolling their children in a pre-school. Kindermusik classes provide children with an opportunity to participate in a structured classroom environment and learn to follow directions, which are essential skills for an easy transition from home to school.

Find a copy of our complete August e-newsletter here.

We make it to the Medford Transcript!

We are super excited that we have a wonderful new location in the heart of Medford Square.
It was about time to be "discovered" :o), so we are thrilled that we made it to the Medford Transcript. They came over on the day of our Grand Opening and took some nice pictures. Click here to read the wonderful article they wrote about us.

Can music make you smarter?

Studies have shown that music is food for the brain; it is great for brain development whether you are the listener or the player.

"Nothing activates as many areas of the brain as music," says researcher Donald A. Hodges, Covington Distinguished Professor of Music Education and director of the Music Research Institute at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

That leads us to ask the ultimate question; whether or not music makes people smarter.

Professor Hodges explains that "...the more education you have, the more interconnections in the brain. Music changes the brain."
Therefore, exposing your child to a rich environment does make a difference.

Patricia DeCorsey, coordinator of Lawrence University's Early Childhood Music Program in Appleton, has also been making this observation."By introducing children to music, so many areas of the brain benefit at the same time, like the mathematical and language centers," said DeCorsey. "It's really a super-advantage."

By connecting music with movement, we promote kinesthetic learning. Professor Hodges adds: "Music is always a physical activity. Musicians are small-muscle athletes."

Kindermusik is well aware of this, that's why we combine music and movement in a the class to promote maximum learning, and fun.


(source: http://childrensmusicworkshop.com/advocacy/canmusicmake.html)

We are featured on dailycandy.com

Kangaroo Club is featured on the website dailycandy.com. Click here to check out the article.

12 Benefits of Music Education

1. Early musical training helps develop brain areas involved in language and reasoning.

2. There is also a causal link between music and spatial intelligence (the ability to perceive the world accurately and to form mental pictures of things)...

3. Students of the arts learn to think creatively and to solve problems by imagining various solutions, rejecting outdated rules and assumptions...

4. Recent studies show that students who study the arts are more successful on standardized tests such as the SAT. They also achieve higher grades in high school.

5. A study of the arts provides children with an internal glimpse of other cultures and teaches them to be empathetic towards the people of these cultures...

6. Students of music learn craftsmanship as they study how details are put together painstakingly and what constitutes good, as opposed to mediocre, work...

7. ...Through music study, students learn the value of sustained effort to achieve excellence and the concrete rewards of hard work.

8. Music study enhances teamwork skills and discipline...

9. Music provides children with a means of self-expression...

10. Music study develops skills that are necessary in the workplace. It focuses on "doing," as opposed to observing, and teaches students how to perform, literally, anywhere in the world...

11. Music performance teaches young people to conquer fear and to take risks...

12. An arts education exposes children to the incomparable.

Opportunity to bond with added benefits

Other Kindermusik parents tell us what they like the most about Kindermusik classes. We were surprised to learn that bonding is first and foremost on their list-ahead of musical benefits, curricula, or socialization.

Here are a few things we heard from other Kindermusik parents:

"I love the parent/child bonding that happens."
"It's a good 'bonding time' for the kids and parents and as a side benefit they LEARN!"
"It is valuable time that we spend together."
"Fun, interactive time with your child."
"Great, positive way for us to enjoy each other..."
"Valuable time with my daughters during my busy week...the chance to re-connect..."
"The experience of bonding together in a way that we could never do on our own ..."

Did you know? Part II

Exciting new research on music training and social-emotional understanding showing that music training enhances a person's ability to pick up clues (in speech) about another person's emotional state. The article is posted below:

From the European Journal of Neuroscience 29:661-668 (2009)

Musical experience and neural efficiency: effects of training on subcortical processing of vocal expressions of emotion -- by D. L. Strait, E. Skoe, N. Kraus, & R. Ashley (Auditory Neuroscience and Music Cognition Laboratories of Northwestern University)

Musicians exhibit enhanced perception of emotion in speech, although the biological foundations for this advantage remain unconfirmed. In order to gain a better understanding for the influences of musical experience on neural processing of emotionally salient sounds, we recorded brainstem potentials to affective human vocal sounds. Musicians showed enhanced time-domain response magnitude to the most spectrally complex portions of the stimulus and decreased magnitude to more periodic, less complex portions. Enhanced phase-locking to stimulus periodicity was likewise seen in musicians' responses to highly complex portions. These results suggest that auditory expertise engenders both enhancement and efficiency of subcortical neural responses that are intricately connected with acoustic features important for the communication of emotional states. Our findings provide the first biological evidence for behavioral observations indicating that musical training enhances the perception of vocally expressed emotion in addition to establishing a subcortical role in the auditory processing of emotional cues.

We are profiled by bostonfamilylife.com

Talita is profiled by Kristina Kharlova at Bostonfamilylife.com on being a mom and a business owner. Click here to read the article.

Did you know?

Everything we do in a Kindermusik classroom has a reason. It's more than music and movement, and fun.
Here are a few reasons why we do certain activities:

When we bounce our children on our laps, we stimulate their vestibular system, which helps with balance and coordination; much needed for those with younger children.

When we put calming music on and rock with our children in our arms, we are teaching them to unwind and relax. This is very useful at the end of a hectic day.

When we look into our children's eyes, we strengthen our bond, and further develop their emotional foundation.

The ability to keep steady beat as a child is a strong indicator of later academic success, including linguistic development and improved ability to read and organize thought patterns. We have regular activities that promote steady beat; when we tap our rhythm sticks, shake our bells and eggshakers to the beat of a song or rhyme.

Kindermusik makes parenting easier

Kindermusik makes parenting easier

What to do when you are stuck in traffic and your child is crying in their car seat?
- Sing to them. Your voice is the most important to your child. My son loves when I sing to him, and he even "sings" along. It is like he is saying to me: crying? what crying?

What to do when your child is fussing and is unhappy?
- Either dance with him or her to "Pretty Baby", or walk, sit, lie down, roll over and "wag your tail" just like Rover would do. Fussing no more!


Spend some quality time with your child doing intentional touch and massage, and eye contact activities; they nurture bond, relax and develop emotional foundation

What is Kindermusik?

Kindermusik is a community of families and educators passionately committed to bringing music to children's lives through developmentally appropriate curricula, CDs, books, instruments, and activities.

Kindermusik's philosophy is founded upon rigorous research and our fundamental beliefs:
- A parent or loving caregiver is a child's first and most important teacher.
- All children are musical.
- The home is the most important learning environment.
- Music nurtures a child's cognitive, emotional, social, language, and physical development.
- Children flourish in a child-centered environment where activities are developmentally appropriate.
- Educators value the learning process-not the performance-of music making.
- Every child should experience the joy, fun, and learning that music brings to life.