Kindermusik and Your Child: Listen… Listen..

Originally Posted by Jamie Sterling in Kindermusik

Shhh! What do you hear? Turn on your listening ears and you will hear many things in a Kindermusik class on any given day: the sound of a dog barking, the rain dripping on a tin roof, or the quiet, low “thump-thump” of your very own heart beat. But why is listening so important for a child?

The infant listens and learns to recognize the sweet sound of his mother’s voice early on. The toddler listens and learns to imitate and speak his language. The preschooler listens, and learns to follow instructions. As they listen, and listen, they learn, and grow, and their world expands.

Active listening differs from simple hearing in that we must choose it as an intentional act. We are surrounded by a cacophony of noise in our world, and we must choose whether or not to listen and process the sounds we hear. Active listening opportunities like those provided in Kindermusik allow children the opportunity to learn to listen intentionally. So turn on your listening ears! You might be surprised what you will hear!

Compiled by Theresa Case, whose Kindermusik program at Piano Central Studios in Greenville, SC, is proudly among the top 1% of Kindermusik programs worldwide.

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See the original post: Kindermusik and Your Child: Listen… Listen.. | Minds on Music

Babies are born to boogie, study shows

(Courtesy MSNBC.com) 

Babies love a beat, according to a new study that found dancing comes naturally to infants.

The research showed babies respond to the rhythm and tempo of music, and find it more engaging than speech.

The findings, based on a study of 120 infants between 5 months and 2 years old, suggest that humans may be born with a predisposition to move rhythmically in response to music.

"Our research suggests that it is the beat rather than other features of the music, such as the melody, that produces the response in infants," said researcher Marcel Zentner, a psychologist at the University of York in England. "We also found that the better the children were able to synchronize their movements with the music, the more they smiled."

To test babies' dancing disposition, the researchers played recordings of classical music, rhythmic beats and speech to infants, and videotaped the results. They also recruited professional ballet dancers to analyze how well the babies matched their movements to the music.

During the experiments, the babies were sitting on a parent's lap, though the adults had headphones to make sure they couldn't hear the music and were instructed not to move.

The researchers found the babies moved their arms, hands, legs, feet, torsos and heads in response to the music, much more than to speech.

Though the ability appears to be innate in humans, the researchers aren't sure why it evolved.

"It remains to be understood why humans have developed this particular predisposition," Zentner said. "One possibility is that it was a target of natural selection for music or that it has evolved for some other function that just happens to be relevant for music processing."

Zentner and his colleague Tuomas Eerola, from the Finnish Centre of Excellence in Interdisciplinary Music Research at the University of Jyvaskyla in Finland, detailed their findings in the March 15 issue of the journalProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

© 2012 LiveScience.com. All rights reserved.

Read the original post and watch video at: Babies are born to boogie, study shows

Announcing Little Treblemakers 4:30 pm MULTI-AGE CLASS begins TODAY!

Greetings!  I'm excited to announce that our 4:30 pm TUESDAY MULTI-AGE CLASS begins next week January 15th In BURBANK/TOLUCA LAKE!  We'll have all the fun you expect in a KINDERMUSIK class: Instruments, Singing, Dancing, Playing in a unique multi-layered environment.  REGISTER NOW or RSVP to come in for a Free preview or Make Up class.      I'd love to have you join us!  Have questions about the schedule or want to know what happens in a Little Treblemaker's Kindermusik class?  Please Email, call/ text 818.953.4954  I look forward to making music with you soon!      Have a Delightful  Music Filled Year! Patti James BA, MA Little Treblemakers   Licensed Kindermusik Educator

What is Audiation & Why is it an essential element in Learning Music?

Audiation
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


In the English language, imagination implies a visual mode. Since there was no word similar to imagination for the auditory mode, music education researcher Edwin Gordon coined the wordaudiation in 1975. Audiation is to sound in the same way that imagination is to images. For example, audiation may involve mentally hearing and comprehending music, even when no physical sound is present. It is a cognitive process by which the brain gives meaning to musical sounds. In essence, audiation of music is analogous to thinking in a language. The term audiation should not be confused with audition, the mere perception of sound. Audiation is also more than just a musical form of auditory imagery. Developed audiation includes the necessary understanding of music to enable the conscious prediction of patterns in unfamiliar music and sound.

According to Gordon:

Although music is not a language, the process is the same for audiating and giving meaning to music as for thinking and giving meaning to speech. When you are listening to speech, you are giving meaning to what was just said by recalling and making connections with what you have heard on earlier occasions. At the same time, you are anticipating or predicting what you will be hearing next, based on your experience and understanding. Similarly, when you are listening to music, you are giving meaning to what you just heard by recalling what you have heard on earlier occasions. At the same time, you are anticipating or predicting what you are hearing next, based on your musical achievement. In other words, when you are audiating as you are listening to music, you are summarizing and generalizing from the specific music patterns you have just heard as a way to anticipate or predict what will follow. Every action becomes an interaction. What you are audiating depends on what you have already audiated. As audiation develops, the broader and deeper it becomes and thus the more it is able to reflect on itself. Members of an audience who are not audiating usually do not know when a piece of unfamiliar, or even familiar, music is nearing its end. They may applaud at any time, or not at all, unless they receive clues from others in the audience who are audiating. Through the process of audiation, we sing and move in our minds, without ever having to sing and move physically.[1] (Gordon, 1997, pp. 5-6)

....Read More From Wikipedia: Click Here

Tips for parents (As Posted on Kindermusik's Blog): This is a fun game to play with in the car, in the kitchen, or while cuddling on a lazy Saturday morning when the children pile in bed with you. Start singing a favorite song, and then stop before you sing the last note of a phrase or the end of the song. Wait and see if your child sings it for you. If he does, he is successfully “thinking music,” or hearing it in his head. 

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