Feathered Friends :)

What a fantastic Feathers class we had yesterday!! The lovely  Sal brought along her real live feathered friend to meet us :) Our Kindermusik Village class thought La La was just wonderful - especially when he came out of his house & sat on Sal's shoulder. 


Birds are nature's most wonderful music makers - and La La very happily joined in when we sang our songs. It was a shame poor Jarvis wasn't feeling well and was exiled from the class (and went on an outing with his Dad!), he loves echoing La La's squeals!


Echoing interesting sounds and exploring what their voices can do is a great language acquisition tool for our small friends, by listening and experimenting they learn how to use their mouths in different ways to make different sounds, a very important precursor to using real words. So, spending some time with the birds is a very useful way to spend an afternoon!


There are lots of ways of encouraging lovely wildlife to come and sing to you - and one of these is to leave them something tasty to eat! Try this recipe out - it's from the NZ Forest & Bird website :)


Bird Pudding...
1 - 2 cups of fat
Crumbled up stale bread, biscuits or birdseed
Honey
Bacon Rinds


Place the fat, honey and bacon rinds in a bowl. Stand in another bowl filled with boiling water. When the fat begins to melt, add the crumbs or birdseed. Stir the mixture to combine, and squish into a ball shape. When it's cooled down, put your bird pudding ball into a mesh bag (like the ones you buy onions in!), and hang it in a tree. You can also put out a tasty drink for your feathered visitors - they love sweetened water! Make sure you put it all up high enough that any passing cats don't interrupt the party :) 


We're inviting our native birds into our Kindermusik classroom as well as into our garden - the class created a very cool version of 'Who's Making All that Noise' this week. I'm looking forward to seeing what we can come up with next week!


Musically yours,
Kath :)


PS...Jarvis missed his friends terribly this week - hopefully he'll be back on board next Tuesday!

Music in the Back Yard :)

To find out about our giveaway, click here first! 

I've just posted these over at my other blog, but thought they were a wonderful way to show how music can be hiding in the most unexpected of places :)

This morning, Jarvis and I went hunting for music in the garden. At first we found it in the usual places - Deedee the chicken and her team (Rosso, Rouge, Rojo, Blanco and Bianco - totally original chicken names round here...) clucking gently, with the occasional noisy outburst, the fantails sitting on the clothes line, the pheasants making their honking noises when they get startled and take off! 

Then, while I was hanging some washing out, Jarvis discovered a new source of music in one of his favourite things - the garden hose!! 

I heard him giggling wildly, and turned around to see this! He was making Shhhhhh sounds to go with the sound of the water spraying out of the hose, and totally enjoying the experience of having water flying EN wildly around his face :) Lucky I had the camera sitting outside, it was priceless!

Water is a very musical medium indeed! As well as the 'shhhhhh' sound of the water spraying from the hose, think about the sound you can make when you blow bubbles with a straw, the splash you get when you jump into a puddle, the sound of water pouring from one container into another, the sound of the shower sprinkling water into a full bathtub, the swish swish swish sound you hear when you  wiggle your hands or feet in a full bucket :) 

Only three days left of the giveaway - don't be shy lovely readers, please post a comment!! I'd LOVE to hear about your backyard music adventures, or even just have you say hello and tell me a little about you & your family :) 

 We have ten more followers now than we did a week ago, and that's wonderful - I can't wait to give away a term of Kindermusik Village on Thursday :)  

Don't forget to find the mysterious letters in this post - not many left to find now ;)

'til tomorrow!

Kath

A Musical Week!

Hello everyone!

I wonder if you could think for a moment about what you did yesterday...and where music featured in it! Maybe you were listening to the radio in the car, maybe you sang to your baby as you put him or her to bed. Maybe you tested out one of our new songs from Tuesday's class & sang whilst chasing a ball around the lounge :)

A major philosophy behind Kindermusik is that you, the parent, is the child's first and most important teacher, and the home, not the classroom, is the best place for the child to learn! Our class only takes up 45 minutes of your week, but by using your home materials & finding the music in your home environment, the Kindermusik experience can be a part of every day :)

A favourite activity around our house this week has been 'I roll the ball to you' - after having so much fun using the big exercise ball on Tuesday, we've been chasing it around the house with great enthusiasm! Jarvis is still crazy about the Cock-a-doodle-Moo! book, which we read often. It has so many opportunities for vocal play - and he has started making 'brrrrrrrm' noises when he plays with his toy tractor which is a new development!

I really hope you're enjoying the special time you have with your child in class, life is so busy that it's nice to have 45 minutes when you don't have anything else you need to be doing except for enjoying music with your beautiful baby!

How have you been using your At Home Materials this week? Where have you found music in your day? We'd love to hear all about it!

Have a wonderful day :)

Kath & Jarvis