Young Children's Festival

Young Children’s Festival

On the 13th June Musikate is taking part in the Young Children’s Festival in Castle Park. As a part of this event we would like to try to get the Young Child and Imagine That students together to showcase some of the things we have been working on this term.

All participants will receive a little present to say thank you for supporting us.
Imagine That students please bring your chime bars and meet us in the tent at the festival at 12.35pm. We will play our chime bars and then invite any children in the audience to join us for some other activities.
Young Child students please bring your glockenspiels and meet at 2.50pm be ready to play Lucy Locket, Mouse Mousie and Bell Horses.

Family Time - Coming Soon

We’re a Musical Family!
Bringing children of all ages together provides a dynamic and integrated learning experience for everyone. So we took favourite Kindermusik songs and activities like “Shake, Shake the Apple Tree” and “hammocking” and rolled them into a fun, family class where each child is welcomed and valued and family “together time” is celebrated and cherished.


Family Time Curriculum Description
Age Range: newborn through 7 years
Class Structure: Saturdays throughout school year
Class Length: 45 minutes each week
Class Size: 6-7 families with at least one caregiver per family

What Families Experience In Class:

Singing From the first “Hello” song to the last “Goodbye,” exploring a variety of musical styles and genres leads children to find their own voice. Plus singing helps with memory and recall, physical development, creativity, and socialization.
Assorted Movement Whether moving as a family, as a class, or as individuals, Family Time movement activities enhance coordination skills, create opportunities for imitation and exploration, and give everyone something to smile, rock, bounce, or dance about.

Story Time Reading aloud to children stimulates their curiosity, expands their knowledge, and broadens their understanding of language.
Family Jam. Children as well as adults will love selecting a unique instrument and joining in one big class jam instrument play along session each week.
Musical Concepts Fun engaging activities bring out the musicality in everyone, from the youngest member of the family to the oldest. Families learn more about music as they learn more about each other.

Expert advice A Kindermusik educator explains how the musically based activities enhance each child’s complete development.
Learning continues at home With the home materials, the learning and bonding continues at home with the child’s best teacher—the parent!

Enrollment includes:

* Weekly 45-minute class
* Set of Home Materials including a Family Activity Guide, Hand and Finger Puppet, Two CDs of music from class, two instruments, and two literature books

Village Week 3

The Rhythm of my Day Week 3

Much of this week’s music contains syncopation, where a strong beat shifts and is less emphasized. Syncopation is often used in jazz music, and in much of the Caribbean music you hear in The Rhythm of My Day.

When you move to this music, you may feel yourself getting a little off-balanced.
As you dance with your baby, he will also feel these patterns in the music. Moving to these different rhythms will help your baby make new neural connections and challenge his sense of balance and coordination—essential for learning to sit, crawl, and walk.

This week take some time at home to move together; it’s the perfect way to learn with love!

‘Baby needs to move his: arms, legs and all body parts in order to gain control over them and make movements deliberate. Move your baby to learn, so he can learn to move.’
How to have a Smarter Baby. Dr S Ludington-Hoe

Fiddle Dee Dee Week 11

Studies show that there are three major factors in early learning which benefit competency in adulthood:
Rich sensory environment
Freedom to explore with few restrictions
Available parents that act as consultants

Foster excitement about Kindermusik this week by pulling out your Home Activity Book. If you haven’t already used your Hush, Little Baby picture cards, now’s a great time to remind your child of this familiar lullaby that we enjoyed over the past five weeks while looking at the pictures (pp.18-22) and singing the song. Other playful picture activities can be found on pp.26-27 and pp.30-31. How many bumblebee games can you and your child create?

Have fun playing!

Young Child Week 25

Reviewing material previously learned and working with new material access different areas of the brain. With this in mind, we make it a point to review favourite songs and singing games each and every week, as well as work with novel material.

New this week were the terms staccato and legato, referring to the articulation or detached and sustained qualities of sound. Staccato refers to sounds that are separated and detached. The children found that the word staccato lends itself to this type of sound if you separate it as follows: stac-ca-to! Legato refers to sounds that are smoothly connected. Try saying legato as smoothly as possible.

Continue to sing favorite songs together this week—using your stac-ca-to and legato articulation, naturally!

Have fun at home learning to play Mouse Mousie. We all had a go at doing this in class and got on extremely well. Notice how your child approaches the task; do they rely on their aural memory, or do they follow the written music. Both approaches are valid. Be sure to stick a mouse sticker on your sheet for every day you practice.

Imagine That Week 10

“[T]he successful minds of the future will be those that have learned what it feels like to be in charge of themselves. They will be able to direct their own attention and come up with their own action plans.”*

Through activities such as Three Artists Matching Game and Moving Artists, your child is encouraged to offer her own ideas, to answer open-ended questions, to consider options; in other words, to come up with her own plan. It is through multi-layered activities such as this, always presented so as to be engaging for young children, that Kindermusik continues to spark learning in so many areas of your child’s life. I hope that you find Kindermusik is an important part of your child’s growth and life experiences.

Be sure to look in your home activity book week 10 for some ideas for how to make a bell. You can explore as many ideas as you like. You might find an object that looks like a bell which you could adapt to sound like a bell, or you might find an object which sounds like a bell.

We would love to see your bells in class if you remember.

P.S. Remember to bring your Kindermusik Resonator Bars and Mallets to the next class.

*How to Have Intelligent and Creative Conversations With Your Kids, by Jane M. Healy, Ph.D., p.13.

Fiddle Dee Dee wk 10

Fiddle Dee Dee Week 10

For the last couple of weeks we have been playing the chime bars while singing Sweetly Sings the Donkey. The repetition of this activity has allowed your child to become more and more familiar with the song, thus encouraging him to sing along. This activity also provides the opportunity for the children to develop their sense of steady beat, the most fundamental property of music. Feeling, moving to, and playing a steady beat help children develop a sense of time and the ability to organize and coordinate movements within time. A good sense of steady beat is necessary for all movement. Children who acquire a good sense of beat are coordinated and become more able learners.

You can further experience steady beat activities by playing your Fiddlesticks (or another beat-keeping instrument or homemade instrument) while listening to songs such as ‘Liza Jane, The Tailor and the Mouse or Polly Wolly Doodle. More music at home increases your child’s opportunity to develop a love for music.

Also this week at home if you haven’t already have a look at page 18 in your At Home book. You will see some different activities you can do with the lullaby pictures for Hush Little Baby. Why not have a go at making the mobile or some Lullaby cards.

Have Fun!

The Rhythm of my Day Wk 2

The Rhythm of my Day Week 2

Our first two weeks of class have focused on the interval, “sol-mi.” Also known as a descending minor third, this interval is the easiest interval to hear and imitate. As you become more aware of sol-mi, you will probably hear it in all kinds of children’s music.

This week at home, try pairing some of these singing concepts in your conversations with baby. “What shall we do with the baby-o” after a bath? “Wrap her up in a towel-o” of course! A well timed, “This is the way we eat our peas…” You may even notice your own stress levels lower when you can sing, “Lost it, lost it, where is the teddy?” while looking everywhere.
Some other things: You may have noticed that we make a big deal about labelling movements. This week we were choosing movements from the wall chart to make up new verses to our song.

“Children recognise an object and understand movement long before they can use language to tell you. We can help Baby in developing her ability to speak by labelling movement and objects. She will then begin to connect the relationship between the word and the movement or object. After months of babble Baby will begin to imitate these sounds and speak the words that previously she only knew by sight and sound.” How to talk to your baby DP Dougherty.

If you have enjoyed the drumming in class why not find some empty containers and sing while banging on your homemade drums. Use your imagination to find a variety of different sound sources and have some fun! Bang along to the home CD or simply sing a favourite song.

Young Child week 23

Finally got round to posting the homework reminder.

You have another week on this because of the bank holiday, so be sure to get your glockenspiels out and practice all the songs you have learnt so far.

This week we learned new note 'f'. F is located in the first space of the staff.

Use your notes chips and Act page 4b to review the notes 'c' 'a' and 'f'. Then use a crayon to draw the notes in the correct spaces.

Can you put the stringed instrument cards in the correct order from smallest to largest? Do you remember the names of all the instruments?

Be sure to bring your activity sheet back to class next week

So many babies

Village for babies 0 - 18 months, has become so popular that we are now over subscribed. This week I have had to turn people away. As a response to this we are putting on a new session on Monday afternoons at 2.45pm. We realise this is not a convenient time for those who have older children at school, or those who work, but hopefully it will suit some. If you are new to Kindermusik Village and would like to come and try a class for free please let us know.

A typical Village class includes singing, instrument exploration and play, baby massage, sign language, dances, rocking and lots of lovely cuddles.