An excellent listen

Hello all! A very busy week around here - apologies for not posting until now. I might even get two posts in tonight if I'm tricky!


I listened to a fantastic piece on National Radio today, about the profound effects of music on our young friends - it even made mention of Kindermusik Village! It was an interview with Greta Bradman, an amazing singer who has studied developmental psychology and neurophysiology, focussing on the impact of music on the brain. 


I highly recommend you take a few minutes to have a listen :) It will reinforce that you really are making the best choice for your child by being a part of our wonderful Kindermusik family.


Radio New Zealand - Kathryn Ryan interviewing Greta Bradman

Birds Making Music :)

Just a tiny post from me this week, I hope everyone's been enjoying listening to the birds singing us beautiful songs, reminding us that spring is just around the corner!


Here is a most wonderful link to explore at home, the Karori Wildlife Sanctuary in Wellington has a great website, and on it we discovered a page dedicated to the songs of our native birds. We've been having a fantastic time playing the sound clips, and listening to the ways Jarvis responds to them! 

As always, the fantail is his favourite ;)

Remember, imitating sounds is a fantastic way for our little ones to get ready for speech, and it's lots of fun too!

http://www.sanctuary.org.nz/Site/Conservation_and_Research/Birds_sounds.aspx

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!

Become an Explorer!

Hello everyone - and welcome to term three! We had a fantastic first class for the term this morning, and are very excited to welcome Sarah & Tiki to our Kindermusik family :)

Did you know that babies who are allowed to explore within safe limits generally become eager and flexible learners? Finding new ways of using objects is great food for young brains :)  When our children are investigating objects, they're creating Action Schemes in their minds - what it looks like, feels like, tastes like, the sound it makes when you shake it, what happens when you bash it on something, all of that wonderful stuff. 

Do some investigating at your house! You could use a store bought instrument, something you've made, or even something from the kitchen (Jarvis is a big fan of the potato masher!). Think outside the box - what fantastical ways can you find of using it to make music? What sounds does it make?

I'd love to hear about your explorations - your comments always make me smile :) 

Have a musical week! Kath & Jarvis 

Free Preview Class :)

For all of you who didn't win our giveaway, here's a little something for you :)  Give me a call  on 8686146 and come along to a free preview class - you'll have a wonderful time and there's absolutely no obligation attached. 

Congratulations!!

Congratulations to Emma Gibson, who will be joining us for Kindermusik Village next term!! It's been lovely seeing more of you become followers and leave comments, and solve my little puzzle ;) I hope you'll all keep reading, and finding out more about ways to make every day a little more musical. 

I'm really looking forward to meeting our newest Kindermusik family when the term starts on July 20th!

Have a lovely day, everyone! 

Ooooh - nearly there!

To find out about our giveaway (which closes tonight!), click here first!

The giveaway is nearly over - and I see a couple of new followers have joined us as of this afternoon! One clever cookie has solved my puzzle already, and sent me the correct answer :)

Jarvis and I came up with S a novel musical instrument today, also known as 'Balloon with Bell in it'. It took me rather a long time to get a bell inside a deflated balloon, but once I did the fun was endless! Apologies for the rather dreadful photo and messy lounge ;) Hard to get a good shot of a young man vigorously making music!

A few days back I posted about the places music can be hiding in your backyard, today we spent the day searching for it inside. The Bell Balloon Creation came about when Jarvis started rummaging through a drawer & found a bell and a balloon, before that he made some pretty fantastic music using a stone mortar and pestle on the kitchen floor. There are endless possibilities - and none of them require you to go to a shop and buy an instrument! Our children can teach us an awful lot about how to make the most of what's around you :)

I look forward to checking my emails in the morning and seeing who else has taken the time to play my puzzling game - thank you all so much! I'll find my lucky winner then - if you haven't become a follower, make sure you do tonight - and leave me a comment too! I know there are some shy folk out there so I'm changing the rules a little - if you're a follower you get an entry, if you leave a comment you get another, and if you solve the puzzle you get yet another :)  I don't want to scare off people who aren't confident blog commenters! 

So...send your answers to me at serendipitystudio AT y7mail DOT com (excuse the lack of linky, I don't want those sneaky web bot things to steal my email address...), there's a link on the right hand side under the subscription box too :)

Good Luck!!

 :) Kath