Kindermusik at the Creative Music Center

Foundations of Learning statements address the "whys" and "hows" of learning. They help us to understand the learning and growth that is occurring in children’s minds and bodies while they sing, play, and explore in Kindermusik class.

Here are a few examples of the Foundations of Learning:

Visual-Spatial Skills—The more experiences a child has with movement, the better her brain can interpret and integrate sensations from her eyes and body. This will be observable later in skills like matching shapes, letters, and numbers, distinguishing foreground from background objects, and awareness of directionality and position in space.

This is why we do a variety of activities in Village where Baby moves through space with Mom. We bounce, rock, sway, and walk, helping Baby experience all of these different kinds of movement in order to lay the groundwork for the skills she will later develop.

Relaxation—Relaxation is a learned behavior. Regularly taking the time to relax for a short time helps babies and toddlers learn how to calm themselves. They also learn that becoming calm and relaxed is not only for bedtime and sleep.

This is why we include brief rocking and quiet times in Village and Our Time classes. Babies and toddlers often treasure a minute to cuddle up before moving on to a new activity.

Repetition—Babies and young children love repetition! They thrive on it because it is so essential to their development. With this “practice” new connections are actually made in the brain, and further repetition helps to solidify these connections.

In all class levels, we repeat many activities for several weeks in a row. The first time, it may draw a child’s attention because it is unique new experience. After several weeks, he can remember the song or activity and can predict what is going to happen when it is repeated. And often children will request their favorite songs over and over again, much as they will request the same bedtime story every night.

Singing skills—Singing skills tend to develop in a specific order—first words, then rhythm, phrases, and pitches.

Vocal development activities in Village and Our Time progress focus on echoing sounds and words and chanting simple rhymes and chants. Activities in Imagine That! continue to use chants and progress to simple melodies which are easy for children to imitate, starting with two-tone patterns and moving to more complicated ones.

Focused listening—Hearing is a sense. We hear whether we are paying attention or not. Listening is a skill in which we focus on specific sounds to help us make sense of the world around us.

We use brief focused listening activities in Our Time and Imagine That! to help children focus their attention on specific sounds, to identify them, to notice similarities and differences between sounds, and to consider how to imitate them. We use longer listening activities in Young Child classes which require the children to interpret what they are hearing.

Rituals—“Rituals guide children through crucial transitions and reinforce a sense of identity.”

--Meg Cox, The Heart of a Family

This is why we begin and end each class in every age group with a special hello song and goodbye song. This provides the children with security and helps them to become a part of the classroom community.