Kimberly Sena Moore, MM, NMT-F, MT-BC, a board-certified musical therapist and neurologic music therapist, writes a great article about why musical therapy works. Among other reasons, she notes that our “brain is primed early on to respond to and process music,” and that “Children (even infants) respond readily to music.” Of course, at the Song of the Heart studio, we see this daily. (You can find her article here if you’re interested.)
Music therapy benefits a variety of people. For instance, cancer patients may use music therapy to help ease the symptoms of their treatment[1]. Music therapists work with kids who have Autism Spectrum Disorder, and military personnel who have PTSD. And research into the benefits abounds. For instance, Gold, C., Voracek, M., & Wigram, T in 2004 found that “music therapy has a medium to large positive effect” on children and adolescents with a range of mental or behavioral disorders such as depression and addiction. Even in recent news, we see that Gabby Giffords’ progress proves the success of music therapy.
While most Kindermusik instructors are not clinically trained or licensed music therapists (there are some!), they facilitate a researched-based music program that parallels many aspects of music therapy, including musical movement, improvisation and creating imagery through music.
It is no surprise, then, that Kindermusik educators hope to connect their program to all children, not just neurotypical children with a particular economic background. For this reason, Kindermusik International established the Ruth D. Anderson Kindermusik Children’s Fund. It “provides assistance to children who are physically or emotionally challenged, who are financially or educationally disadvantaged or who have lost a parent.”[2] The fund cooperates with Kindermusik educators who provide free tuition so that qualifying families have equal access to quality at-home materials.
Last week at the Song of the Heart studio, we celebrated We Love Kindermusik Week. My daughter was unfortunately sick, so we didn’t get her t-shirt until this week. Nevertheless, she’s been wearing it non-stop since. You may have heard your instructor note that proceeds from the shirt sales went to the Ruth D. Anderson Kindermusik Children’s Fund, and we were able to contribute more than $300. Thank you!
So who has received those scholarships? Here are two:
Joscelyn
As a baby, this girl’s epileptic seizures were extreme enough that her parents and medical team decided to remove half of her brain–with the thought that the remaining half would, over time, adapt. She has a lifetime scholarship with the help of Kerri Sox’s Kindermusik program at Playtime Music Studios in Florida.
Here is a video of her journey, and you can check out her blog here.
Alexis
Several years ago, Alexis received a scholarship. She was born at an unusually small size and weight (1.5 pounds, 12 inches), though doctors were unable to explain why. Although she didn’t speak, she was able to communicate with sign language, and loved listening to Rhythm of My Day, from Kindermusik.
Photo from Deborah Foster, 2012
[1] American Cancer Society website, accessed 2/20/15
[2] Kindermusik Minds on Music blog, accessed 2/20/15
I find myself continually writing in this blog about how Kindermusik develops the whole child (here, here and here, just to name a few). But as I sat in my daughter’s Kindmusik for the Young Child class this week, I realized that Kindermusik actually teaches music, too. Fancy that!
The first-year Young Child students have recently acquired their glockenspiels and have been diligently studying two-note patterns. They even have a variety of musical poems to recite as they work through the idea that the low notes are on the left of the glockenspiel (where the bars are long) and the high notes are on the right (where the bars are short).
Second year Young Child students build on this concept as they continue to add more notes and experiment with the lengthening and shortening of strings on a dulcimer.
Ah! But it doesn’t stop there!
I first became interested in Kindermusik as I listened to my sister-in-law describe this very concept. With my background as a secondary school educator, my lifelong interest in music, and having just had my second child, I knew that music instruction was important, but that I couldn’t possibly dream of having my particular preschooler sit at the piano and work with me to learn the notes. (I know some kids are capable of doing this, but none of mine have been—or, maybe better, I haven’t been able to do this with them.) Therefore, I was elated when she described the idea of using age appropriate activities to teach these concepts.
One of my favorite Kindermusik songs for babies is “Zoom-e-oh!” You may notice with your little one that when you sing “Up in the sky!” the notes are higher, while “Down to our toes” we sing at a lower pitch. You may dance to this song, lifting your baby up and down through the room, or you may use a scarf to play with, swishing it high and low. Though the concepts are simple, this is where our babies can begin to distinguish high and low notes—in an environment filled with love and nurturing.
As our children grow and become toddlers, they continue to learn through movement. You may notice that if a child who is just learning to talk says “up” or “down,” he or she also demonstrates the movement somehow—pointing, or even moving his or her whole body. In our Kindermusik toddler classes, you’ll see that we use simple poems and songs to tie the musical concept of high and low sounds with imaginative play, language development and movement. For instance, “Can you stretch like a cloud in the sky? Stretch big and tall, stretch up high!” Or, in another one of my favorite Kindermusik songs, you may “Walk along, Rover” or “Crawl along, Rover,” which has the added benefit of encouraging kids to explore opposite movements.
Once children become preschoolers, their locomotor skills have drastically improved. Therefore, they can become much more sophisticated in their imaginative play—hopping, skipping or galloping. This allows us to go for a hike in the mountains and fly like birds or hop around on the ground like bunnies. Additionally, children this age explore a greater variety of musical instruments, so that they learn about the different timbre of each one and see that there are some that make higher sounds (like bells) and some that make lower sounds (like drums).
At the Kindermusik by Song of the Heart studio, however, musical learning doesn’t stop with a child’s graduation from Kindermusik. With the Suzuki Singers class, children can learn to match pitches with their voice, and in Simply Music Piano or ukulele classes, kids develop skills to produce a variety of pitches on a couple of different instruments that may appeal to them.
And, yes, I suppose I could make a case for applying musical concepts of high and low sounds to something philosophical, like helping kids understand the highs and lows of life. But, sometimes just learning the music is great, too!
Disclaimer–this isn’t my daughter. But isn’t she delightful?
My youngest daughter turned 6 just before Halloween. With a new job, Halloween costumes and laundry to do, I did something I’ve never yet done with any of my kids’ birthdays—I got some outside help. We had her birthday party at the Song of the Heart studio, with the help of Ms. Katie.
As I’ve talked to other recovering perfectionists, I’ve realized that there really isn’t any set standard of what is “perfect,” it just kind of depends on our own definitions of “ideal.” I’ve been doing “super-mommy” for many years (rather than “real life” mommy, which I’m discovering is infinitely more enjoyable). But for me that has meant having great home birthday parties—complete with making our own lasagna, or doing puppy face-painting, or walking the plank like pirates (all of which included Pinterest-worthy, homemade invitations). I shudder to think how much stress I inflicted on myself and those around me or how much joy I perhaps sucked out of the room in an attempt to make it joyful. (I also try to be kind to myself and realize that my kids, once they’ve had an appropriate amount of therapy, may figure out that I really was doing all of this because I loved them. Passionately. And that this was the best way I could show it at the time.)
While I recognize that other moms, long ago, have figured out the beauty of getting help with a birthday party, it was revelatory for me this year, and born out of necessity.
And I’m not sure I’ll ever go back.
My daughter has been totally into dolphins these days, so we did an ocean theme. Ms. Katie was fantastic, and the speedboats/Bilibos were a total hit. Afterwards, we had a little picnic lunch and cake at the studio. We enjoyed ourselves tremendously, and the girls ended the party reluctantly.
My older two kids (a 12-year old and a 9-year old) were at first way too cool to participate. Nevertheless, eventually they got into it and they contributed a lot of energy to the room (the giant scarves and the motorboats helped draw them in, for sure). It warmed my little mama heart to see them dancing as they used to, but of course now much, much bigger than they were when they participated in Kindermusik as students.
There were some activities that they hadn’t remembered doing (but which obviously I have lots of memories about, as I’ve written previously). Even still, I found it fascinating to watch my oldest daughter dance with a scarf. She has danced for many years in her post-Kindermusik life, so it was no surprise to me to see her move so gracefully.
Nevertheless, I firmly believe (and research will support my belief) that even her Kindermusik experience informs her current dancing abilities, even if she doesn’t remember the specifics of class with me. She’s had many, many years of practicing a variety of movements and learning to express herself through dance, and that started in our living room in New Mexico.
In Kindermusik, we talk about developing the whole child. Watching my older children, I started thinking that maybe “whole child” isn’t just about an education for the present moment—it’s also about the whole of childhood. As we approach Thanksgiving, then, I can definitely say I’m grateful for the opportunities for learning and growth that have come to my family through Kindermusik.
In my daughter’s Kindermusik for the Young Childclass this week, Ms. Carol asked the kids to pick up rhythm sticks and scarves, each in turn. This step required the kids to stop one movement quickly and start another one, all in line with the mood of the music. Music games are a great way to help kids learn impulse control.
Neurons (the nerve cells mostly in our brain) work in only 2 ways: on and off. Hopefully, by the time our children are adults, they have learned to balance the activation and inhibition messages of their brains. Clearly, however, there are neurological and other physical/psychological disorders that influence a person’s ability to regulate impulsiveness—and it is always important to make sure the expectations we have of our kids are developmentally appropriate for them and their particular circumstances.
I find it interesting, though, that the other side of impulse control can be a child’s tendency to stick to one action or thought for a long time. In this situation, rather than illustrating a child’s inability to turn “off” the impulse to act, perseveration illustrates child’s inability to turn “on” the impulse to act.
I’ve mentioned a few times about my new part-time Spanish teaching gig. While I am a trained secondary educator, in my new job I teach all of the kids at school, from Kindergarten through eighth grade. My background as a Kindermusik educator has been incredibly helpful, since Kindermusik classes span a similarly broad range of developmental milestones in kids, when you compare the babies to the first grade graduates.
Throughout my day, I see exactly how impulse control varies as kids mature. Kids’ ability to control their impulses influences their abilities to learn at school. Additionally, I note that for some kids, their pervasive impulsivity or perseveration presents some big challenges that may have life-long consequences for them. Every half-hour, though, as new classes come in, I have to adjust my expectations to allow for brain maturity—and, interestingly, some of my toughest kids are in the upper grades (because: puberty—when the brain forgets everything it was capable of doing just months ago).
Of course, as parents, we have to deal with the consequences of children’s impulsivity. I spend much of my day at home with the kids refereeing the “Moooommm, he hit me!” sentiments.
Have you seen this ad? I’m sure the folks at the ad agency know exactly the kinds of situations that caregivers face when dealing with developing brains and poor impulse control. When I see that kid’s smile at the end, I just want to give him a great big hug. (Small print: I’m not endorsing Clorox, nor is the studio paid to pass along this ad. I am, however, their target audience so I see it a lot and my heart melts every time.)
One can find many resources for methods of dealing with the behaviors in the moment. But I love the idea of using games (when everyone is happy and not trying to rush out the door to school) as a tool for such development, too.
Other ways that we work on impulse control in Kindermusik classes include “freeze” dances for the preschoolers. With the toddlers, we have “fast and slow” dances, which invite kids to practice moving at different paces as cued by the music. Even with the babies when we transition from activity to activity, we are using play to help stimulate neural development.
Yes, in Kindermusik we teach music. But what a great way to use music to help develop the whole of our children!
It never fails. The more I learn about educational theory, the more amazed I am by the Kindermusik approach to early childhood education.
As I’m getting ready to return to a school classroom to teach Spanish (my job before being a mom and Kindermusik educator), I attended a conference for teachers of world languages last week in Denver. One of the big trends in foreign language education is Comprehensible Input, or the idea that we acquire and are able to use a new language when we understand what we hear. Of course, we have to grow, so we learn new, small chunks at a time, with lots of repetition of those chunks—it’s what Dr. Stephen Krashen calls a “plus one” component. We stick with what we can understand, and push ourselves a little bit. Over time, this brings fluency.
Kindermusik understands that a parent or guardian is the child’s best teacher, and Kindermusik educators are here to facilitate that interaction and learning. Instinctively, these caregivers are a child’s best language teacher. We simplify our vocabulary when referring to “mama,” “daddy” or “juice,” and we go from, “Juice?” to “More juice?” to “Want more juice?” in such a natural way that language educators look to them for guidance in teaching a second language.
You’ll see this mirrored in Kindermuik class, and not just in the Signing Time where kids are learning yet another new language. Specific words get repeated in songs and chants (rhythm makes everything better), and we repeat things from week to week, with little tweaks to the activity that make it grow from, for example, a seated game to a full dance.
In a Kindermusik class, our educators will model how to scaffold music-making with your child. We base this principal Vygotsky’s theories of child development. As Lynne Cameron notes in Teaching Languages to Young Learners, “(Other people) play important roles in helping children to learn, bringing objects and ideas to their attention, talking while playing and about playing, reading stories, asking questions. In a whole range of ways, adults mediate the world for children and make it accessible to them. . . . With the help of adults, children can do and understand much more than they can on their own.” (pg. 5)
In Kindermusik class, you’ll see this when you watch an adult and child tap rhythm sticks together. You’ll notice that it works best when a caregiver keeps his or her sticks still and allows the child to tap those. You’ll also see scaffolding when you watch a dance in one of the baby classes—as a little one gets twirled in the air, she gets movement through space in ways she wouldn’t be able to on her own (obviously!). Or, with the bigger kids, kids will learn the glockenspiel note by note, with lots of guidance and instruction from Ms. Carol.
In fact, this principal is so important, Vygotsky held that we measure intelligence not by what a child can or cannot do alone, but what they do with guidance. Personally, I believe the kids in our studio are extremely brilliant, but I’m probably a little biased.
Not many more weeks until Kindermusik starts back up again in the fall! Hope you’ve had a great time at a Song of the Heart Summer Camp, and we’ll see you soon. . .
Simultaneous action, development, or occurrence. The state of operating or developing according to the same time scale as something else. “Some individuals do not remain in synchrony with the twenty-four-hour day”
–Google Dictionary
(For the similarly named song by The Police, click here.)
In human development terms, synchrony is the dance that happens between babies and caregivers, right around three months of age. In highly technical terms, it’s what makes adults go completely ga-ga when a baby smiles at them—suddenly, we get huge smiles on our faces and we start talking like we forgot all those grammar lessons from fourth grade.
Come into a Sing and Play Kindermusik class and observe the way moms, dads, grandmas and grandpas interact with their babies. Synchrony abounds. It is part of why Kindermusik is about developing the whole child, in this case, social skills.
Kathleen S. Berger, in her human development book, Invitation to the Life Span (2014), writes:
“One study found that those mothers who took longer to bathe, feed, and diaper their infants were also most responsive. Apparently, some parents combine caregiving with emotional play, which takes longer but also allows more synchrony” (pg. 141).
Interestingly the adults are the ones who imitate the babies, not the other way around. This explains why newborn babies don’t elicit the same response from us. They get plenty of oooh’s and aaaah’s, but no peek-a-boo games.
What happens when we don’t react this way, when we don’t give the kids this attention? Ed Tronick, the chief researcher on the still-face technique, shows us (fair warning, it might be really hard not to reach through the computer and give the child some love, but rest assured it doesn’t last long, and ends well):
So, obviously, this is something that comes naturally to us as caregivers, whether or not we’re enrolled in a Kindermusik class. But Kindermusik has given me is a large array of songs that I can sing to help slow me down during those routines and to engage in this responsiveness cycle with my children. I can spontaneously burst into a rendition of “Bubbles,” while I’m bathing them, “I See You,” when doing a peek-a-boo game, or “Little Red Wagon,” when I’m bouncing one of them on my lap waiting for the oil to get changed. And, gratefully, these are songs that I can actually tolerate listening to while we’re driving (unlike Other-CD’s-That-Must-Not-Be-Named).
And, as I have said before, I especially love coming to class and having that time with them there. While I strive for it daily with my kids, it is the one place where I can come and just be truly present with them—no laundry to worry about, homework to get done, or kitchen floors to mop.
All my kids walked out of class with a great earworm—exactly what I wanted!
You may not remember much from your years studying a foreign language in school, but I’d bet you remember a song or two. It’s no secret that music serves as a fantastic vehicle for second language development.
There is a fascinating study by Brandt, Gebrian and Slevic, published in the Frontiers of Psychology journal online by the National Institute of Health that talks about how music and language develop. After examining similarities and dissimilarities of music between cultures and across time, they decide that “ (M)usic is creative play with sound; it arises when sound meets human imagination.”
Isn’t that a great definition? Creative play with sound, mixed with human imagination. Sounds exactly like my daughter’s Kindermusik class!
They write, “speech and music turn out to be closely related” in terms of how the brain processes the sounds. Additionally, when they looked at the great variety of musicality in multiple languages, they concluded that even the pitch of spoken language carries meaning, as when, in English, we turn a sentence into a question just by changing the inflection of our voice: “You’re doing well?”
Importantly, they note that, since a baby is unable to distinguish what parts of speech are unimportant, he or she pays attention to “all of the musical features of speech.” This attention “provides a richer context for language induction.” In fact, the ability to “hear musically” allows us to learn language in the first place!
Here is one of my favorite examples of the musicality of language. Pogo created it (and many others) by taking snippets of sounds from movies and turned them into songs of their own. Everything, from the beatbox in the background, to the phonemes that we imagine into certain lyrics, comes from the varying pitches in people’s voices (though sometimes he includes bits from the soundtrack). My kids enjoy listening to them, too!
Kindermusik’s mission is to develop the whole child. As it is inextricably connected with language development, music gives us a powerful medium to do just that.
“It is really through the arts that we give form to some of our most powerful experiences of being human. . . I really believe that an education which omits the arts is omitting a major part of what it is that makes us human”—Sir Ken Robinson
Have you seen The Monuments Men? George Clooney directed this film, a great homage to the real-life men who, in World War II, risked their lives in order to preserve the legacy of the worlds’ great artists, the works that Hitler determined to destroy if he could not have them for himself.
The Book Thief touches on this subject, as well. I loved the book, but finally got to see the movie adaptation last weekend (how much did I love Geoffery Rush?). The image of people tossing books onto a burning pyre was powerful, and I couldn’t help but wonder what role this extermination of art and literature had on the devastation of the Holocaust. If the arts help us remain connected with our humanity, what happens in a world without those arts?
People more well-versed than I have written a lot about the importance of arts in education. Check out some of these great insights (yes, I’m a little consumed with Sir Ken Robinson these days, as his paradigm has come up in multiple conversations of late):
There’s an article from edutopia.org that examines what, exactly, is being done currently in schools to revive arts education: here
Dosomething.org has a great list of facts about how important the arts are, and includes suggestions about how teens can get involved: here
The National Endowment for the Arts has a lot of great resources, news, and grant opportunities: here
It’s true, Kindermusik is a high-quality music program that uses all sorts of strategies and techniques to help children learn musical concepts in a developmentally appropriate way. However, it is far more than music education. It is a way of using the arts to help develop the whole child. Raising a child is an amazing, and sometimes very difficult, task. Sometimes it is hard, in the middle of the diapers and cleaning up the messes, to remember that, among the difficulties, there is great joy in raising children. Participating in Kindermusik classes with my children has been a great way for me to “give form . . . to most powerful experiences of being” a parent, and I’m grateful for it.
Warning: You may get a flashback to 9th grade biology reading this blog post, and you may feel compelled to flirt with the cute kid sitting next to you. Or, you may find yourself with an uncontrollable urge to sink lower into your seat to avoid the teacher’s gaze. But hang in there, there will be no test or grade afterwards. It’s just something to think about when you’re in class this week.
The corpus callosum is the part of our brain that facilitates communication between the right and left hemispheres of our brains. The bigger the corpus callosum is, the better the coordination between our right and left sides of our bodies. Research shows us that the absence of a corpus callosum can be problematic, leading to difficulties with vision, hearing, sleep, attention span, just to name a few.
When I was younger, I learned that the right side of the brain controls the left side of the body, and vice versa. We now know that the division between the hemispheres is not so simple. Both sides of the brain are active whenever we do something, even though each side has a specialty.
I learned the other day that left-handed people continually confront tasks that demand they use their non-dominant hand (Berger, K. (2014) Invitation to the Life Span. New York City, New York: Worth. [180]). For instance, they shake hands with their right hand, but eat with their left. Or, they figure out how to use right-handed scissors (with their right hands) because left-handed ones are not as common in schools. (The other day I had to use a pair of left-handed scissors, though I worked them with my right hand! Holy Cow! Everything felt completely upside down!)
It may be this back-and-forth that causes left-handed people to have bigger corpus callosa than us righties. And, there is some evidence to suggest that people who are left-handed may have strengths in creativity and an ability to access both hemispheres of the brain. Judy Garland, Jimi Hendrix, Paul Simon, Michelangelo, Carol Burnett and Jim Henderson were all lefties.
In class, your child may reach for an instrument with her right hand, or her left. Of course, in Kindermusik class we would encourage a child to do what comes naturally in that regard. However, we also work on activities that develop coordination between the hemispheres—actions that require both sides of the body (running, skipping, even gentle baby massage in the infant class). It’s one more way that we are helping in the development of the whole of your child.
My son, when he was about 18 months old, once said the word “puppy” (his favorite stuffed animal), and that was it for another year. He seemed neurotypical in all other aspects, but I was still concerned that he wasn’t speaking. I had done some sign language with my oldest girl, but at that point got serious about signing with him. I increased my vocabulary, showed him as many Signing Time videos as I could get my hands on, and noticed a drastic change. Where he had previously taken me by the hand, walked me over to the fridge, patiently waited for me to open the fridge, and pointed to the milk, now he was giving me the sign for MILK. It was as if we flipped a language switch in his brain—he seemed to understand that there were symbols (signed or spoken) for things he wanted or needed, and he could use those to communicate. With the introduction of sign, his language abilities took off.
Obviously, correlation doesn’t prove causation—my experience with my son isn’t a viable science experiment. Lucky for us, though, there are researchers who have studied this, and their findings are similar. Linda Acredolo and Susan Goodwyn have found that kids who learn sign language have better overall language skills than those who don’t learn sign—they have “bigger vocabularies” and “(use) longer sentences.”
You’ll know you’re in a good learning environment when a teacher finds a way to engage verbal, aural and kinesthetic/tactile learning modalities into the lesson plan, as we all have ways that we learn best. For me, personally, I have to take notes (preferably in a textbook—it was heaven when I got to college). I rarely refer back to these notes, but once I have written them down, I remember them more easily. My daughter, on the other hand, needs to use manipulatives of some sort—she always works better when she’s cutting something, or moving something around. Muscle memory works to our advantage to help us recall certain concepts–by teaching children sign language, we engage their full bodies in the learning process.
As I recollect this process with my son, I find it hard to believe that the 8 year old child who is, at this moment, scrambling his own eggs for breakfast was that same kid who, even when he started speaking, was difficult to understand (because even once he became more verbal, we still did some speech therapy together). The journey of a mom is fraught with equal parts love and pain. Nevertheless, I’m grateful for all the ways he and I have communicated through the years, and have a special place in my heart for the way sign language helped us through a particularly critical period.
Last spring, Kindermusik dissolved their Sign & Sing class. At that point, Angela Horsfall joined the Song of the Heart community to teach Signing Time classes—and she’s absolutely fantastic! She has the benefit of being an Advanced Certified Instructor. There are still openings for the class, and we’d love to have you join us, regardless of your previous experience with sign.
