Greeting and Name Songs

Every child loves to hear his or her name.  We begin each week with the same song, establishing a ritual that the children love. The greeting song signifies the time for all of the before-class chatter to stop and the structure of the class to begin.  Including children’s names in a greeting song each week is particularly appealing as it affirms each child as an individual but also as an integral member of the group. Children also enjoy being in the “spotlight” for the time it takes to sing each verse, and they delight as the rest of the children and their parents wave, clap, or point to them!   They learn very early on that each child will be featured within the greeting song, and they wait patiently until their turn comes around.  

Bouncing Activities

Bouncing activities are a favorite for most children, whether they are bouncing on your outstretched legs or sitting next to you, copying what you are doing!  These activities, particularly if you are sitting togethe, give your child a full-bodied sensation of the steady beat of the music, which is the basis for all rhythmic understanding.  Additionally, the movement of bouncing up and down is stimulating to the vestibular function of the ear, which is responsible for regulating your child’s body position, movement, awareness in space, and sense of balance. 

Many of the bouncing activities that we enjoy in class allow time for you to lift your child’s arms or whole body, if you are able, high into the air, or rolling backwards with your child, providing both contrast and enjoyment.  

Finger Plays

Body Awareness activities that focus on the child’s hands are commonly known as Finger Plays.  Children delight in the rhythmic speech that usually accompanies touching and manipulating each individual finger, making the finger play beneficial to your children in terms of both their movement and listening development, and they have the added benefit of increasing your child’s vocabulary.  

Doing the finger play with me in class is probably the best way to encourage your child to play along.  Some children enjoy doing the finger plays on their own, but others may enjoy it if you manipulate their fingers.  

Body Awareness

Teaching children to move consciously, rather than simply as an involuntary reflex or as a result of having no impulse control, is one of the greatest gifts we can give to our children.  Being in control of one’s physical self is the key to success in all future social and educational settings. These simple games, where we name and explore a specific body part and how it moves, are the first step for our children as they work to gain control of their bodies.  

The chants or songs that are often associated with these activities are appealing to the children because they usually contain multiple repetitions, such as “arm, arm, arm, arm” or “head, shoulders, knees and toes, knees and toes”.  Children enjoy the repetition of the speech as well as the movement as they strive to gain control and finally mastery of their body movements. 

Stationary Movement Activities

Stationary Movement activities give your child the opportunity to explore what his/her upper body can do.  These activities provide a stable position from which your child can discover his/her own space and various ways s/he can move within that space.  S/he can begin to experiment with spatial concepts such as high, low, around, in and out, which will further your child’s vestibular development. Since the vestibular function of the ear needs to be firmly established before the auditory function can be dealt with, doing activities which deal with spatial concepts will help your child to become a better listener.

Traveling Movement

Traveling Movement activities are fun and particularly appealing to toddlers.  Most of them have only recently started walking and they are anxious to practice it as much as possible.  Add to that all the possible variations, such as marching, stomping, and running, and the attraction is obvious!  But did you know that all of these movement activities are energizing to the brain? There are times that we get children up and moving to teach a specific spatial or musical concept, and there are times when we engage your children in movement activities to give them the mental energy necessary to attend to the next activity.

Favorite traveling movement activities are ones that involve various ways of moving that alternate with stopping on cue.  However, you should be aware that although these activities are included in the toddler class, I really do not expect your child to have mastered the art of stopping until around the age of 4.  They are included in the toddler class because children need to practice before they can be expected to reach mastery. You see, your toddler’s language center in the brain is not as well developed as his/her impulse to move.  

Call and Respond Songs

These songs are valuable additions to the class because they quickly draw everyone into participation.  A call and respond song usually has a short, repeated phrase, such as “oink, oink, oink” or “cuckoo, cuckoo”, although other times it may consist of the class repeating the entire phrase sung either on the CD or by me.  These are an important addition to the class because once your child is comfortable in the environment and the song is very familiar, your child may want a turn to sing individually, which is the first step to your child paying attention to his/her own voice, adjusting it as necessary.

Instrumental Play

We play instruments each week in our classes, primarily because it’s fun!  This is the time for getting to know the feel, and the sound of simple rhythm instruments, experimenting with different ways to play them.  Although I will be giving you and the children examples of how to play the instruments, I do not expect everyone to do exactly as I am doing the whole time.  Instead, I want to give the children an opportunity to get to know the instruments and to establish a repertoire of ways to play the instruments.  

Using Scarves 

In addition to playing a variety of instruments, we will sometimes use scarves in class.  Scarves are a wonderful prop and most children delight in them. They are inviting to the children and the light, flowing movement of the fabric naturally leads children to move expressively.  The lightweight fabric is also great for playing “peek-a-boo” games, allowing your child to hide behind the scarf, while providing him/her with the security of being able to see through the scarf.

Patterns – Rhythmic and Tonal

In every class I will do a series of both rhythmic and tonal patterns – short rhythmic phrases or little snippets of melody.  I ask everyone to echo me as a group. As our comfort level dictates, I invite individual children to come take turns. Some children delight in this activity, while others don’t want to have anything to do with it.  Take heart; at this point, it really doesn’t matter what your child does with patterns in class. Much more important is what they do in the comfort of your home, or in your car! Think of the pattern work we do in class as a model for you and your child to play with patterns at home. 

However, I do want to take a few moments to remind you where we are going with these patterns in later classes.  You will notice that there are 4 basic sets of patterns that we use in all of this year’s classes. That is because these 16+ patterns form the basic building blocks of the music language; in fact, you might think of these as the keys that the children will use to unlock the code of traditional music notation.