One Week to Go!

Yay! Only one week til Kindermusik Village Do-si-Do gets underway for the term. Jarvis & I have missed all of our wonderful friends over the past few weeks, we're very excited to see you all again next Tuesday :)

Do-si-Do is a fantastic unit - I can't wait to share it with you all. A really exciting component of the unit is the literature book. It's a little different to the previous books we've used, in that we use it in class every single week! Its title is 'This is my dance' and by the time we get to the end, that's exactly what we will all have - a joyful dance to share with our beautiful children. 

A major focus of this unit is Rhythm & Movement - something which our babies are born with an understanding of! For nine or so months, whilst living in our warm bellies, the soundtrack to their lives was the steady sound of our heartbeat. As soon as our babies are born, they seek that familiar beat in the world around them. These familiar patterns help him or her to make order out of the chaos that is the outside world :)  By providing lots of opportunities for rhythmic activity, we give our little ones recognisable, predictable & patterned information to latch onto. 

Through the exciting movement we'll experience in Do-si-Do, our babies & toddlers will gain awareness of their bodies, and the amazing things they are capable of. They'll even learn about negotiating gravity (another rather alien concept when you've spent nine months living underwater!). Our children will learn so much from the rhythm & dance we will experience in this unit! 

One brainwave I had the other day was to suggest everyone bring a sling or frontpack to our Do-si-Do classes - with most of our beautiful class members not able to walk for long, there'll be a lot of carrying to be done, and I know that I get super tired when I'm carrying Jarvis for more than a few minutes without our Mei Tai! I absolutely love wearing Jarvis, and wearing him to dance seems like a pretty wonderful idea. 

Should anyone need a sling, one of our super talented class members, Jacquie, has some rather nice ones for sale through her shop, Cheeky Cherubs :)

Off I go to practice my moves for next week - have a fantastic week, everyone, and we look forward to next Tuesday!!

:) Kath & Jarvis

A Memento of Term One :)

Term one is finished! We've had the most wonderful term, with an amazing group of mums and babies :)  


Here are a few pictures I took over the term, many thanks to our Kindermusik families for sharing their smiling faces with everybody!

Make your own free photo slideshow

We're all really looking forward to next term, when we'll get on our dancing shoes & get grooving with Kindermusik Village - Do-si-Do!  There are only a couple of spaces left in term two's class (starting Tuesday May 4th)  - be in quick! 

Keep checking over the break for lots of ways to bring music into every day :) A big thank you to my amazing Kindermusik families, you guys rock! 

Date Fix-up!

A very quick post from me today - I've put the wrong start date down for next term's classes!!


Term Two will begin on May 4th! (not May 3rd, that's a Monday and class is still going to be on Tuesdsay!!). 


So sorry for causing any confusion - I must have looked at the calendar wrong! 


Have a musical weekend :)


Kath

Timbre!

Hello! Today's class was so much fun - seeing our babies having such a wonderful time exploring the instruments definitely put a smile on my face.


So many different timbres (the distinctive quality of sounds!) were floating around the room - the jingling of bells, the boom of the big drums, the pitter patter sound of the wave drum, the 'chh chh chh' of the egg shakers...all different, all providing another musical experience for our children! 


We spoke about how exploring & experiencing different timbres can benefit our littlest friends, giving them the opportunity to develop a sensitivity to sound and a listening vocabulary of timbres. This helps to attune their ears to the different sounds & timbres in music and speech! 


What wonderful sounds can you find around your house? Rachael & Kobe have been making music by dropping pegs into a can, Jarvis loves the sound of the chicken food dropping between his fingers onto the deck (we don't love that one quite as much!), what's your favourite? :)


We're gearing up for next term - come & join us for some dancing in Kindermusik Village : 
Do-Si-Do! Classes begin May 3rd, places are limited - visit our website  or email us
to find out more. 

Legato...Staccato!

Hello all!


I hope everyone's having a wonderfully musical week :)  I really enjoyed our class on Tuesday, we missed a few friends who weren't able to join us, and we look forward to having everyone back on board next week! 


Something we talked about on Tuesday, which is really interesting as well as really easy to incorporate into our babies' experiences, was Sensory Contrast. This is something we explored when we played 'I Roll The Ball To You', then made a few modifications to add in 'Bounce' and 'Throw'! 


As our babies experience the contrast between a smoothly rolling ball, and a jumpy, bouncing ball, he or she is understanding on a sensory level the difference between smooth, sustained movement, and sharp detached movement. And as our babies learn so much through sensory experience, this is a great way to explore legato (smooth) and staccato (short & sharp)!  


Staccato and Legato are important in music, but did you realise they are also an important part of spoken language? 


Here are a couple of lines from one of Jarvis's favourite books - Schnitzel von Krumm's Basketwork, By Lynley Dodd...


He made a new bed
in a jumble of shirts,
pyjamas and towels
and flowery skirts...




Read it out loud - can you see which parts read smoothly and which are sharper? There are loads of reasons that there's contrast  - things like which sounds make up the words (lots of hard sounding consonants like c,d,b are 'bouncier' than the  vowel sounds and soft consonants as you find in towel and flower...), whether words are short or long, the way the author has used rhythm...I could go on forever. Think about the lyrics of lullabies...they use lots of long vowel sounds, and gentle words. If they were fast & bouncy they wouldn't quite have the desired effect ;) 


What's more important though is that the contrasts are there, and we hear them every day when we listen to the people around us,. Understanding this is going to help our babies with decoding language!  


It really is amazing that doing something as simple as singing a song and handling a ball in different ways can be connected to something as tricky as the contrasts we find in the English language - isn't it wonderful that Kindermusik activities have such an effect on our little people as they get bigger and learn more & more about the world! 


Goodness, that was quite a post! I hope you can find some wonderful ways this week to incorporate sensory contrast into your day.  We'd love to hear your ideas!


Have a wonderful week :)
Kath & Jarvis

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

Ready for Reading!

A very belated post this week - who knew life would be so busy with a gorgeously curious little boy to play with!

Jarvis & I really really loved our first Kindermusik session for the term - welcome back to our friends from 2009, and a big welcome to our newest friends; Fiona & Taikorekore, and Jacquie, Jake & Bonnie. It's lovely having you as a part of our Kindermusik family in Gisborne!

A highlight of lesson one for us was sharing our new Kindermusik book with the class. Cock-a-doodle-Moo! is one of Jarvis's favourite things - not only favourite books, but favourite things overall! The bright colours, the cheery animals, and the endless potential for making ridiculously cool noises, make it number one around here.

Reading with your baby is such a wonderful thing to do, for so many reasons. Storytime is a perfect time for a cuddle, and reading in a cozy & happy environment will help baby associate reading with pleasure & fun. Another positive is that by exposing babies to a variety of vocal sounds, we're helping them learn about language! Every sound which you & your baby make is a learning experience :)

We're also sharing other useful tips when reading with our children, without even realising it - things like which way up to hold a book, which way we turn the pages when reading a story (in English anyhow!), and that what's written on the page is the same as what we're saying out loud. Obviously our babies using these examples is a fair way down the track, but all of these clues about literacy will build up over the years!

What's your favourite book to read with your baby? How does your baby respond to a favourite book? We'd love to hear about your experiences here :)

Have a musical Monday - and see you tomorrow to our Kindermusik friends!