The Magic of Village for Babies Newborn to 18 months

Join the Family Time Fun! Call 754-4611 for more info.

Music and togetherness for your family ages newborn and up

Build family bonds, creativity and physical and mental development in a delightful one-room schoolhouse for babies, toddlers, preschoolers—and you, the parent.

Each week your children will listen to instruments and to each other, learn from their peers and older children, and enjoy music and movement with hoops, scarves and tumble-around play. Story time and family jams, puppet play and happy singing—every Family Time activity encourages discovery and exploration and fosters sharing and social skills too. In this special place for musical, social and emotional learning, your children will strengthen their ties with each other and with you—and developing the skills they need at home, at school, and on the neighbourhood playground.

What’s the class about?
You children get exposure to the emotional and social skills they’ll need for starting school, or on the playground. It’s hard to find time for things you can all do together, as a family, thats why Family Time is so special. You’ll see how music can help your family laugh and play together, and learn from each other.

Tuition includes:
• Developmentally appropriate curriculum for parents and children
ages newborn and up
• 10-week semester
• One 45-minute class per week
• At Home Materials—Family Guide Activity book, two CDs of music
from class, two literature books, one kangaroo hand puppet with a
pouch that holds a kangaroo finger puppet, and two double egg shakers.

What you’ll see happening in class:
Sing. When a child sings in the appropriate vocal range, toddlers and preschoolers begin to explore their voices and emerging pitch accuracy—but the benefits
go beyond building strong singers. Singing develops memory and recall, lung and cardiovascular strength, as well as creativity, and socialization. Simply hearing
those voices also helps a baby develop her own vocal skills.

Play. Musical instrument and prop-play throughout the semester builds strong finger muscles, and develops a sense of rhythm. Plus, hoops, scarves, and tumble-around activities develop coordination.

Move. With growing coordination and interest in their peers, younger children will watch the older ones learn how to skip and gallop.

Listen. Throughout the class, the children are listening to instruments, to each other, and to specially designed opportunities to focus in on developing critical listening skills.

Story Time. When children listen to a story in a group, they watch the reactions of each other, helping to stimulate curiosity, expand knowledge, and develpo a
life-long love of reading.

Family Jam. Everyone grabs and instrument and plays along with the music—helping children experiment with a variety of instruments and sounds.

Benefits of Massage

Kindermusik is so much more than a weekly music class!

Classes are child-centered, developmentally appropriate, and focus on the growth and development of the whole child. In every Village and some Our Time classes we provide time for simple massage activities that we encourage you to try to incorporate in your daily home routines. Choose a favourite relaxing recording, sing a song, chant a nursery rhyme, or make something up, all while bonding with your child through the magic of intentional and gentle touch.

Follow this link for more massage ideas: http://www.makewayforbaby.com/massages.htm.

"Gentle massage of the neck and shoulders creates oxytocin, a hormone that produces feelings of calm and comfort. Massage of the back provides stimulation to an area that is vitally important to child development. As the back is stimulated, it stimulates the growth of nerves all over the body."

- (Carla Hannaford, author of Smart Moves, in an interview by the Kindermusik International Creative Team, January 2000)

My Other Job

On March 3 in Nanaimo and March 4 in Duncan I will get to be a marimba soloist with the Nanaimo Chamber Orchestra. I will begin the second half of their program with a marimba solo by Paul Smadbeck called Rhythm Song and finish the concert with Ney Rosauro's Concerto for Marimba and String Orchestra, an exciting work with jazz and Brazilian influences.

I'll be playing my Marimba One marimba which was built for me by Ron Samuels in Arcata, California just over 3 years ago. The instrument itself is a work of art, thanks to Ron, with Honduras Rosewood bars and a cherry frame. It is 100 inches long and over 200 pounds!

For times and ticket information, visit the Harbour Living website.

The Younger the Better

Some people are quite surprised to find out that Kindermusik is for children as young as newborns. Really, what can such a young child gain from starting Kindermusik as an infant or toddler?

The following statement, jointly issued by The National Association for Music Education (MENC), the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC), and the US Department of Education, helps explain just how important music education for even the youngest children can be.

The Value of Music for the Very Young

The idea that very early education provides great long-term benefits has been rendered incontestable by studies in cognition and early learning. Research in developmental psychology and commonsense observation underscore both the importance and the wisdom of making music an integral and overt part of the earliest education of young children:

(1) We know that music is among the first and most important modes of communication experienced by infants.

The youngest children lack the gift of speech, but they are deeply responsive to the emotional ethos created by music. The lullabies sung by parents help children to accomplish the fundamental developmental task of learning-to trust their environment as a secure one. Songs communicate adult love and the experiences of joy and delight; they teach children that the world is a pleasurable and exciting place to be. Music is essential to the depth and strength of this early foundation for learning and for connecting to life itself.

(2) As young children grow and develop, music continues as a basic medium not only of communication, but of self-expression as well.

Through music, children expand their cognitive universe as they first experience-and later learn to produce-sounds organized to carry musical meaning within their culture. Music expands memory and assists in developing crucial language skills. Music exerts a multiplier effect on reasoning skills, especially on spatial reasoning-an effect that has been demonstrated experimentally. Music also reinforces such logical and perceptual ideas as beginning and ending, cause and effect, sequence and balance, harmony and dissonance, as well as arithmetic concepts such as number, enumeration, and timing. In addition, as centuries of tradition and modern vehicles such as Sesame Street have taught us all, music in the lives of young children is a highly effective means of delivering vital information about the world itself, as when it is used to teach such basic content as counting, colors, relationships among ideas, social skills, and the wonders of the natural world. Music is also a powerful tool for communicating the full spectrum of human emotion in ways appropriate to children’s experience. Children who may not be able to express verbally their happiness, anger, or sadness can find in music the right outlet and mode for what they cannot yet identify or express clearly using the tools of language.

(3) As preschool children listen to and respond to music, and also learn to make music by singing and playing instruments together, they create important contexts for the early learning of vital life skills such as cooperation, collaboration, and group effort.

(4) Music contributes strongly to “school readiness,” a foundational education aim for all our children.

Music experiences can help children prepare to learn to become literate as it helps them become more aware of and focused on the phonemes that make up the language or languages they will need to excel in school. When children develop musical skill and understanding, they are developing basic cognitive, social, and motor skills necessary for success throughout the educational process. They are preparing skills that will apply to language, to literacy, and to life itself.

....[U]nless the positive learning engendered by music in the earliest years is nurtured by those in the best position to provide it, i.e., parents, music teachers, and professional caregivers, the educational power of music and its potential for sound development can be diminished and diluted.

- excerpted from a report from the Early Childhood Music Summit, June 2000

Spring 2007 Kindermusik Schedule

Village (0-18 months, 16 45 minute classes)
Hickory, Dickory, Tickle & Bounce and The Rhythm of My Day

• Tuesday - 11:15am
• Wednesday - 10:15am
• Saturday - 11:15am

Our Time (1.5-3 years, 15 45 minute classes)
Fiddle-Dee-Dee

• Tuesday - 10:15am
• Wednesday - 11:15am
• Friday - 10:15am
• Saturday - 1:15pm

Imagine That! (3-5 years, 15 45 minute classes)
Cities! Busy Places - Friendly Faces

• Wednesday - 12:15pm
• Friday - 12:15pm
• Saturday - 10:15am

Family Time (0-7 years, 10 45 minute classes)
Our Kind of Day

• Friday - 11:15am
• Saturday - 12:15pm

Can't find a class that fits your schedule? Email the Nanaimo Conservatory to be placed on a waiting list for a new class. Classes begin February 13 and require a minimum of 5 students to run, so please register early.

What Level is Best?

Transitional Ages and Stages
How do I know if my child is ready for the next class level?

The Kindermusik philosophy springs from genuine respect for each child's individual rate of development. Class activities and at-home materials are designed to honor, support and celebrate the wonderful uniqueness of each child. Classes have overlapping age ranges to help parents accommodate their child's own needs.

While a child should be at least the minimum age to enroll in any given class, there are three critical "transitional stages" when parents have an important choice to make about which class is most appropriate and beneficial for their child: at age 1 1/2, when broaching age 3 1/2 and at age 4 1/2.

If your child is near a transitional stage, the following guidelines may help your decision.

Moving from Village to Our Time - Children ready for this next level show many of the following characteristics:

Physical

• Improved walking skills, feet are together, knees flexible (vs. the "just walker" who has a wide-based, legs apart gate with locked knees)
• Beginning to imitate/explore a variety of traveling movements -- run, jump, leap

Cognitive

• Reliably point to correctly identified body parts
• Can follow two-step direction
• Understands what "one" means (vs. a handful)
• Learning to use toys and objects in symbolic ways (moving beyond just enjoyment of sensory properties)
• Can interact in a directed activity
• Able to shift attention with transition
• Connects to an activity; initiates a play sequence
• Reliably responds to own name (refers to self by name in secure environments)
  

Emotional

• Uses gestures and language to deal with frustration (as opposed to just crying or whining)
• Sustains interest and attention in activity for several minutes (Note: not wanting to give something up, such as bells or sticks, can be a sign of maturation)
  

Language

• Can express wants and needs symbolically (gestures, words)
• Has vocabulary of 20 words; receptive language is still stronger than expressive
• Reading with caregiver becomes cooperative. Child will select book, sit, relate to the story and interact
  

Social

• Interested in what other children are doing
• Capable of distal communication (i.e. following verbal instructions from farther away)

Musical

• Moves to music, perhaps to steady beat

Moving from Our Time to Imagine That! Children ready for this next level show many of the following characteristics:

Physical

• Has a taller, thinner, adult-like appearance
• Balances on one foot; jumps in place without falling
• Holding crayons in pincher grasp rather than fist

Cognitive

• Knows if they are a boy or girl
• Can do matching games
• Knows some basic shapes and colors
• Developing divergent thinking skills ("What animals do you like?")
• Beginning transition from concrete to abstract thinking (humor aids this process)
• Sits and listens to stories for up to 10 minutes

Emotional

• Recognizes needs of another person; can be empathetic
• Separates from parent without crying
• Development of humor

Language

• Beginning to master rules of language; speaks in full sentences (4-5 words); asks questions
• Vocabulary growing from 300-1,000 words
• Can relate a series of activities; tells stories ("We went to the grocery store, then to grandma's and I played with the kittens.")

Social

• Recognizes the needs of others
• Turn taking becomes harder than earlier, but beginning to understand reasons
• Learning about patience

Musical

• Recites rhymes
• Sings simple, whole songs

Importance of Re-enrolling

A recent study found that repeated enrollment in Kindermusik improves a child's ability to plan, guide, and control their own behavior.

"Children currently enrolled in Kindermusik showed higher levels of self-control than those never enrolled and those previously enrolled. ...This suggests that in order for children to reap the benefit of increased self-control as a result of Kindermusik participation, it is important to have repeated and recent Kindermusik experiences and remain enrolled in the program."

• "Four-year-old children who had been exposed to Kindermusik for longer periods of time are better off in terms of self-control—namely a child's ability to plan, guide, and control their own behavior—than similar children with less Kindermusik history."


• "These experiences, stop-go, high-low, fast-slow, short-long, and loud-soft, whereby children's motor behavior is guided by the music, appear to be good exercise for young children's emerging self-regulatory skills."

The study, "The Effects of Kindermusik on Behavioral Self-Regulation in Early Childhood," was conducted in 2005 in the psychology department at George Mason University in Virginia.

Results were made available to Kindermusik in May, 2005. The study was conducted by Adam Winsler Ph.D and graduate student Lesley Ducenne in the Department of Psychology at George Mason University.
The 15-month study included 91 children between the ages of 3 and 5 who were split into three groups: 23 students currently enrolled in Kindermusik, 19 students previously enrolled in Kindermusik, and 49 students of similar family backgrounds from local preschools who had never had Kindermusik.

The children were observed doing a variety of tasks that required self-control such as slowing down their motor behavior, delaying their gratification, refraining from touching attractive but forbidden toys, quietly whispering, and compliance with instructions to initiate or stop certain behaviors. Parents also completed surveys.

The study was supervised by Adam Winsler, Ph.D, Applied Developmental Psychology in the Department of Psychology at George Mason University.

Welcome!

Welcome to the Kindermusik Nanaimo blog where you can learn all about Kindermusik music and movement classes for children newborn through age 7 offered by me, Miss Nicky, at the Nanaimo Conservatory of Music.

I look forward to learning and growing with you and your families!