So right off the top I am going to tell you that there is a guest on the blog today. My friend, Analiisa Reichlin, has one of the largest Kindermusik studios in the world and has a GREAT blog on her website. I subscribe to it, read it, and am often inspired myself by it. The other day I was reading her post and was so impressed by it, I asked her permission to post it on my blog. She was happy to share! Maybe you would like to subscribe to her blog as well - she, and her other educators have a lot of great information, inspiration, and mom-to-mom stuff to share.
The link is www.studio3music.com/blog
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It’s August, and like moms everywhere, I’m starting to plan my kids’ schedules for the school year. It can be a tough balance between activities and family. The hours between after school and bedtime (homework, playing, reading together, practice, chores) are important to me. This is my rule when I think about filling them – when my children are grown, will they remember all the stuff they did, or the experiences of being a family? Are they going to pattern their own family life after time spent together or apart? After all, they’ll learn how to be a mom or a dad by watching my husband and I be a mom and dad.
My kids have youth group/club one night a week. I think two additional activities is enough here in the elementary years. (Every family is different. 3 works for us. Your number may be 1 or 5. Just keep in mind the end goal – time with you for learning, love and fun!) We always do a sport/physical activity (they choose), and music.
Most people don’t need an explanation about why sports are good, but why music? When kids enter elementary school, sports are usually stepped up, and music abandoned. I love this collection of the top ten reasons to keep up music throughout the school years:
1. In a 2000 survey, 73 percent of respondents agree that teens who play an instrument are less likely to have discipline problems. – Americans Love Making Music – And Value Music Education More Highly Than Ever, American Music Conference, 2000.
2. Students who can perform complex rhythms can also make faster and more precise corrections in many academic and physical situations, according to the Center for Timing, Coordination, and Motor Skills. – Rhythm seen as key to music’s evolutionary role in human intellectual development, Center for Timing, Coordination, and Motor Skills, 2000.
3. A ten-year study indicates that students who study music achieve higher test scores, regardless of socioeconomic background. – Dr. James Catterall, UCLA.
4. A 1997 study of elementary students in an arts-based program concluded that students’ math test scores rose as their time in arts education classes increased. – “Arts Exposure and Class Performance,” Phi Delta Kappan, October, 1998.
5. First-grade students who had daily music instruction scored higher on creativity tests than a control group without music instruction. – K.L. Wolff, The Effects of General Music Education on the Academeic Achievement, Perceptual-Motor Development, Creative Thinking, and School Attendance of First-Grade Children, 1992.
6. In a Scottish study, one group of elementary students received musical training, while another other group received an equal amount of discussion skills training. After six (6) months, the students in the music group achieved a significant increase in reading test scores, while the reading test scores of the discussion skills group did not change. – Sheila Douglas and Peter Willatts, Journal of Research in Reading, 1994.
7. According to a 1991 study, students in schools with arts-focused curriculum reported significantly more positive perceptions about their academic abilities than students in a comparison group. – Pamela Aschbacher and Joan Herman, The Humanitas Program Evaluation, 1991.
8. Students who are rhythmically skilled also tend to better plan, sequence, and coordinate actions in their daily lives. – “Cassily Column,” TCAMS Professional Resource Center, 2000.
9. In a 1999 Columbia University study, students in the arts are found to be more cooperative with teachers and peers, more self-confident, and better able to express their ideas. These benefits exist across socioeconomic levels. – The Arts Education Partnership, 1999.
10. College admissions officers continue to cite participation in music as an important factor in making admissions decisions. They claim that music participation demonstrates time management, creativity, expression, and open-mindedness. – Carl Hartman, “Arts May Improve Students’ Grades,” The Associated Press, October, 1999.
-posted by Miss Analiisa, who is a proud momma of a flutist, violinst, and soon to be Kindermusik Young Child student!
Younger children, in particular, need to have many reinforcements as the neural connections in their brain are still forming. Experiences that a person has in life are all stored away in their cognitive processing center, providing a framework for sorting through future experiences. Children, however, have less cumulative experience to draw on, and the repetition of an activity is essential to strengthen the learning.
Walks outside in the fall leaves are a great family activity, but autumn can have it's weather challenges, making the outdoors less appealing. Wet, cold, early snow. You can also bring the outdoors in by using something as simple as a paper bag. Talk about the crunchy sounds with your child. Hear the sound of ripping paper as you tear the bag into "leaf-size" pieces. There is something magical about creating an indoor leaf pile and watching them flutter and float :)
Don't you sometimes wish you had a stethoscope and one of those things that doctors use to look in patient's ears? The trips I could have saved myself if I had been able to know the things that only doctors are privvy to.
Patterns make children happy. Knowing what to expect and having things happen in that way not only helps children know what to expect and feel at ease, it's also how they mark time. Physiologically speaking, the meeting of those expectations through the fulfillment of predicted events releases the feel good hormone, dopamine, which is why having a schedule for children makes them feel happy. For example, children usually dash over to the "ball bin" as soon as they come to class because the balls are fun, but also because they are almost always available at arrival time. Or another example would be how children start looking for the "stuffies" once we are done the story in Our Time, because rocking the stuffies always follows the story time. On the flip side, one very disappointed little girl started softly crying one day when at the conclusion of a class she realized that we had left out the story that day to accomodate having more time for our class party at the end. Things were not as she expected, and she missed that one element.
Children want to be able to learn to tie their shoes, help clean up, make their own crafts, spin their own hoops, and catch a ball. Providing children with opportunities to accomplish something with a side helping of mom or dad (or a teacher) to cheer them on is a perfect way to enhance a growing "can-do" attitude!
It's not just that they want to do well. They want us to watch them do well, and tell them so!!
