A Safe Place To Just Be

A Safe Place To Just "Be"

I look back at my childhood and how music gave me sanctuary.

 As a child with disabilities it was music that gave me my “safe” place to be. 

It is so amazing what sticks in our minds as adults. Now; 40 plus years later, I still can remember the magic that my cello gave to me. It is emotional for me to look back at it.  There just never seemed to be a place for me on the play ground or in gym class or the lunch room, but when I sat down in my chair during Orchestra rehearsal, it did not matter who liked me or did not like me. It was all about my cello and the music in front of me and inside of me .  It was was like a magic spell I could unlock and exist in. 

I was a watcher... 

I was not much of a doer 

Or a speaker. ( You would not think this long winded woman was like that now ... but believe me I was. )

I could never say in words what was said just sitting down in a room with other musicians.

It was like stepping into a portal of love and endless time.

Acting was a lot like that too, however I would have never continued as an actress, if I had not been a cellist or pianist first. 

I do not know if this happens for everyone, but for me it was like something I had always known how to do. 

Like walking or breathing... Some artists talk about this. In all honesty, Through all the years I have worked with children. I think everyone has this inner talent , it is just a few who had parents like you who got them going , either with a pen and paper or paints.. Or they put a drum mallet in their hands or they sang every day with their children.

One of the authors of a fantastic song book called" Rise up Singing" wrote once that they collected the songs in the song book from their experiences walking and singing together.

I encourage you all to walk and sing as much as you can with your child. ..

Studies show that children with autism will respond to requests sung to them significantly more so then those spoken... Hum...

It is written in some of the ancient texts that the Heavens are places where the souls earth exist.

They sing , and they dance where ever they go .. Not speaking or walking ,,, Just singing and dancing...

I like that

I sure hope they include Chocolate in that description...LOL

  It made all the sense in the world to me and it did not even have to have a reason. It just was mine. 

By the Way We are going to start to offer beginning String lessons in March. If your interested. Let me know.

Marion Crumbie will be returning from England and I believe she will be offering some classes as well as myself.

This is a great article that NPR had recently .

Musicians are very different people . 

Exciting research was presented at Neuroscience 2009 in Chicago in October that suggests that musicians’ auditory pathways are distinctly different from non-musicians.

Nina Kraus, scientist at Northwestern University, conducted a study comparing trained musicians to the general population in how they perceive and interpret sound. Each subject heard a person reciting simple sentence, but each time they heard it, there was increasing levels of background noise. Kraus’s team of researchers discovered that the musicians were able to pick out the voice more easily and accurately than the non-musician group.

Standard hearing tests, however, show that musicians and non-musicians ears have the same sensitivity. So what’s the difference?

It’s in the neural hearing system, Kraus says. Like a muscle, the brain gets stronger with use. “Musical experience can change how our brain interacts with sounds,” she says. “It’s almost like the brain is better able to pay attention to sound and [to] better extract meaning from sound.”  Musicians, and students of music, must pay close attention to qualities such as pitch, timing and tone. They also need to be able to listen for particular sounds amidst the cacophony of the orchestra, band or choir.

These aspects of sound are the ones that are particularly difficult for children struggling with language development. When given a simple test asking them to distinguish one sound from another, musicians excel, while people with dyslexia and other language problems do poorly. A study conducted by Dana Strait suggests that musical training could help these children who are struggling with language. “These kids seem to be impaired in the very areas that musicians excel,” says Ms. Strait. “Musical experience can change how our brain interacts with sounds”.

I can say that being in special education classes from an early age in school for this very same life challenge, were not as helpful as my experiences playing music. Back in Dinosaur times.. ( just kidding ) no one back then expected Music to be the solution. Art Therapy, Music Therapy ? Great work .  It sort of makes you think that if we build music and dance and art into our everyday lives , just as we build rest and relaxation time in our lives as a normal pleasant task, we would have less situations with OCD or ADD or even socially challenging diseases.

Noticing

By describing what baby is seeing or doing you add a language element to ever activity. This makes a multi sensory language. Having words that go with the sensations Baby feels will help these vocabulary words become meaningful more quickly. Over the semester we will work to refine our observation skills by watching modeling and labeling the movements Baby makes herself and the movement we help them make . When our babies are older and in a class like “ Our Time’  for 18 months to age 3 , we will be able to turn this noticing into true interactive scaffolding. Scaffolding is a method used in early childhood education to stimulate cognitive behavior. It is done like this.

One asks a question to challenge to the child to adapt and expand her learning. 

An example would be like this.

“Emma your sitting there so nicely . I love they way your sitting. Can you stand up for me Emma ? Good Standing Emma... “

This is also used in positive reinforcement .

Tempo 

One of the fundamental aspects of Music

You see how your little child enjoys those games with music that include fast and slow music equally, or that he prefers one extreme over the other. It is important for his understanding of music and language that your Baby hear and feel a range of Tempi .

Your baby has experienced Temp changes in  Skip to my Lou.

Adagio is Slow

Andante is Walking Tempo

Allegro is Running Temp.

Creeped Adagio

Skipped Andante

Run Allegro

Humans learn though movement first. When we skip and creep and run while we label these actions through song we are actually planting seeds of early music education.

I can remember opening my first peanut with a little friend when I was at his birthday party . Clear as a bell. So We do remember.... I wonder what some of your earliest memories are as a young child?

Hum....Something to share at gathering time next week .

Brain Development

Holding your baby in a variety of positions lets him experience a variety of perspectives that stimulate his brain development. 

By experiencing the feeling of motion and seeing the world from different angles, your baby is making brain connections that will ultimately help her balance herself when she is walking and dancing on her own... I read recently that mothers who played music either live with an instrument or on a cd or mp3 player.. had significantly more alert infants. I believe this to be true. 

There is a great book out there called 

The Secret Life of the Unborn Child

by Thomas R Verny, M.D.

This book is so awesome and not too bad to read . It also is good for mommies with infants. 

You can get it from Alibris for the embarrassing price of 99 cents.. I am not joking.. Great book company. 

I read this book when I was pregnant 

Photo fro Offbeat Momma Blog

Vocal Play

Observe Your little one’s reaction to vocal play in Old Mac Donald Had a Farm

Remember how we practiced making pauses and waiting to listen with eye to eye contact for them to start to sing along with you . Babies love to imitate and so the more you play with them in little vocal games like this song or other nursery songs is a fantastic exercise. 

Ball Play and Visual Development

Labeling Our Movement

Not only is ball play lots of fun, but it also has many side benefits, especially to visual development . Lap babies are stimulated by the moving ball as they attempt to visually track the movement. Crawlers begin to exercise visual convergence as their eyes work together to follow the movements of the ball, not only side to side but also as it comes closer and farther away. Both eyes must work together to determine distance. Walkers sue those visual convergence skills as they attempt to coordinate their movements with the visual information and catch or kick the moving ball.

Security

Vestibular Stimulation

Babies who have warm responsive care are more resilient later in life. By following your instincts to cuddle Baby in activities such as this,you are providing the security and safety necessary for baby’s healthy development. - “ Brain Development Research Support and Challenges in Child care Exchange , ARticle by Pam Schiller, Ph> D., Vice President in Early Childhood Division of McGraw - Hill 

Opposites 

During the Skip to My Lou song is also a great example of opposites in the loud and soft examples.

Remember that it does not matter that they know intellectually . They are experiencing this through their bodies first

One of my cello teachers was deaf, like the famous Pablo Casals Cellist of Spain.

I learned at the age of 12 that music is not heard it is felt...

It left an impact on me... 

We talked about the importance of Timbre in music ..

Our lives reflect the movement of life though the color of Music

This is a short description of Timbre that I think really explains it best.

A Few Notes on Timbre:

“The Color of Music”

by: Catherine Schmidt-Jones.

One of the basic elements of music is called color, or timbre (pronounced "TAM-ber"). Timbre describes all of the aspects of a musical sound that do not have anything to do with the sound's pitch, loudness, or length. In other words, if a flute plays a note, and then an oboe plays the same note, for the same length of time, at the same loudness, you can still easily distinguish between the two sounds, because a flute sounds different from an oboe. This difference is in the timbre of the sounds.Many words are used to describe timbre. Some are somewhat interchangeable, and some may have slightly different meanings for different musicians, so no attempt will be made to provide definitions. Here are a few words commonly used to describe either timbre or tone quality.

Reedy

Brassy

Clear

Focussed or unfocussed

Breathy (pronounced "BRETH-ee")

Rounded

Piercing

Strident

Harsh

Warm

Mellow

Resonant

Dark or Bright

Heavy or Light

Flat

Having much, little, or no vibrato (a controlled wavering in the sound); or narrow or wide, or slow or fast, vibrato .

Next week in Lesson Three we will be exploring more about steady beat like what we did in Yankee Doodle as well as the importance of daily intentional touch like massage as well as the magic of routines. 

Learning steady beat creates opportunities to learn coordination and bridges their world in so many ways.
We will have a little drum session this coming Monday.. I have some drums.
Get your grove on Mommies and bring your drum to class .

PS

 Take a look at your Baby Journals. you will be getting new ones which each Village Semester you enroll in. 

PSS

Don't forget to put on your music and spend a few minutes listening to some of you songs and music with your tiny tiny ones... It will really make a difference in class.

The Hello song. Old Mac Donald Song, this Little Cow Eats Grass.

I can not wait to see what kind of dance moves our little students are going to pull out on the carpet for us next week.

I am having a fantastic time with you mommies..

Your love for you families and children is breath taking.

You all carry me through the week. 

Take care..

Tra La La

Miss M

 Sing Good Bye to Baby Baby Baby 

Sing Good Bye to Baby ...

Oh How I love my baby - o .

 Remember Grandma Elowises' advice : 

Setting your kitchen timer for 15 mins to do nothing , think of nothing and really relax is a life saver.

 If your not lying down right now... Set your timer.. It is probably time too... Wink Wink... :)