The most destructive habit……..Worry
The greatest joy…….Giving
The greatest loss…….Loss of self-respect
The most satisfying work…….Helping others
The ugliest personality trait…..Selfishness
The most endangered species…..Dedicated leaders
Our greatest natural resource…..Our youth
The greatest “shot in the arm”……Encouragement
The greatest problem to overcome……Fear
The most effective sleeping pill……Peace of mind
The most crippling failure disease……Excuses
The most powerful force in life……Love
The most dangerous pariah……A gossiper
The world’s most incredible computer……The brain
The worst thing to be without……Hope
The deadliest weapon…..The tongue
The two most power-filled words……“I Can”
_ anonymous
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Events/Calendar
To see upcoming events, possible closings, etc. click on the Events/Calendar link in the left column under Kindermusik with Nancy.
Saturday, November 28, 2009
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Kindermusik Birthday Party
Monday, October 12, I did a birthday party for Camryn who turned three years old on October 11th. Her parents, little brother and I surprised her at her pre-school. She got to have 9 of her friends join her for a Kindermusik Birthday Celebration. I think dad had more fun than Camryn dancing and playing with the instruments.
A great time was had by all!
Thursday, October 1, 2009
Fire Prevention/Awareness Month
This Saturday and next Saturday, many of the local firehouses will be having an open house and activities for the kids. Check out your local firehouse and support them. Fire Preventin Week is October 4 - October 10th.
Also, the Safety Village in Schererville by Show Place is having an event for the day on Saturday, October 3.
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Why Music? Celebrity Quote
“Often a single experience will open the young soul to music for a whole lifetime. This experience cannot be left to chance; it is the duty of the school to provide it.” Composer and educator Zoltan Kodaly
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Wonderful Weather
What a great week it's been so far. I love having the windows open and waking up to a chilly house. My son is into his routine of school, cross country practice, piano and soccer. I'm enjoying some time to myself until my fall session starts the week of Sepptember 14th. No soccer game this weekend since it's a holiday. We get to relax or labor for Labor Day weekend.
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Monday, August 17, 2009
Why Choose Kindermusik? It's true that research shows music helps children become better learners, and that even a newborn emotionally responds to music. Parents respond, too: 99% of Kindermusik parents would recommend the classes to other parents*.
However, all the research in the world can’t accurately capture the look of pure delight in your child’s eyes when she experiences the sights and sounds of Kindermusik, both in the classroom and at home.
With 30 years experience in developing early learning curricula and products, Kindermusik is the world’s most trusted name in music and movement classes for children newborn to seven. Kindermusik curricula are based upon the principles of early development applied to developmentally appropriate practice as defined by the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC). Plus, the Kindermusik philosophy is rooted in the work of early childhood development experts like Piaget, Montessori, and Greenspan.
Our full curricula offer your child seven years of musical learning that involves every aspect of your child’s growth and development: language, motor skills, social skills, cognitive development, emotional growth, and musicality. Throughout the Kindermusik experience, a trusted and trained Educator will guide you and your child through every musical and developmental milestone and help you understand what is happening all along the way. Each semester, a new set of At Home Materials brings the experience out of the classroom and into your every day routines and rituals.
Come experience for yourself why more parents around the world choose Kindermusik than any other music and movement program.
(*Harris Interactive, November 2005)
Sunday, August 16, 2009
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Thursday, June 4, 2009
Honor Received From Kindermusik International
I received Maestro status from Kindermusik International for my volunteer work with Westlake School corporation (pre-school for children with special needs plus mentors). I brought music to 6 classrooms - about 80+ students - this school year. I went to Frank Hammond in Munster and Protsman in Dyer. What a rewarding experience to work with these kids!
Saturday, March 7, 2009
Westlake School Corporation - Children with Special Needs
A few months ago I started donated my time to a couple of the Westlake Pre-schools. Over the last 5 years I have had several children with special needs in my Kindermusik classes. It is so great to see these children be accepted and loved by all the other kids in class and to also see how much they respond to music.
Since many of my students are going to preschool now and not able to also do Kindermusik classes, I've taken music to them. I've gone to Frank Hammon and Protsman and hope to visit a few more schools if I can fit it into my schedule. I spend about 20 - 30 minutes with the kids. We sing a hello song, do 3 songs using instruments, hand movements or a prop and we end with a good-bye song.
I am honored to spend this special time with these students.
Since many of my students are going to preschool now and not able to also do Kindermusik classes, I've taken music to them. I've gone to Frank Hammon and Protsman and hope to visit a few more schools if I can fit it into my schedule. I spend about 20 - 30 minutes with the kids. We sing a hello song, do 3 songs using instruments, hand movements or a prop and we end with a good-bye song.
I am honored to spend this special time with these students.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Let's Rock! Even newborns can follow a rhythm
This article was posted on MSNBC.com
Let’s rock! Even newborns can follow a rhythm
Infant brain responds with error signal when beat is disturbed, study finds
By Robin Nixon
LiveScience
Newborns can follow a rhythm, a new study has found, suggesting rocking out is innate.
The finding, published in the Jan. 26 issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, adds to growing evidence that the newborn brain is not the blank slate it was once thought to be.
Rather, scientists have shown, at birth we already have sophisticated methods for interpreting the world. Discrimination may be crude, explained lead researcher István Winkler of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in Budapest, but "the basic algorithms are in place already."
This may be particularly true when it comes to sound. Infants as young as 2 days old can process pitch and tell if a series of notes are rising or falling in scale. And it is now known they have rhythm, too.
Newborns can't exactly swing their hips to prove they can jive, so Winkler and his colleague Henkjan Honing of the University of Amsterdam monitored the brains of 14 infants listening to variations of a rock rhythm — complete with drum, snare and high hat cymbal.
When "metrically-unimportant portions" of the beat were silenced, nothing much changed among the auditory-related activity in the brain, Honing said. But when the rhythm was disturbed, particularly by omitting the downbeat, the infant brain responded with an error signal: An expectation for a rhythmic pattern was not met.
"A baby's auditory system is working the same way as an adult's, in that it is always making predictions," Winkler said. If the prediction is incorrect, an error signal helps gauge "how much you are off the actual target," he said.
Perceiving emotion while spoken language can take more than a year to develop, "music is one of the earliest things parents have with their children," Honing said. On a note-to-note level, adult speech usually lacks the pulsing regularity of music, but when parents talk to babies, they instinctively switch to melodic and rhythmic intonations "as a way of communicating emotional messages," Honing said.
Infants can perceive anger, happiness and sadness from a caregiver's cooing and baby babble, he said. A study last year found that babies as young as 5 months can distinguish an upbeat tune, such as "Ode to Joy" from Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, from other gloomy tunes.
At a structural level, certain conversation protocols require rhythmic synchrony and are likely unique to humans, Winkler said. While other animals, such as birds and frogs, do have significant auditory skills, few, if any, perceive rhythm or carry on a dialogue, he said. "If you ever talk to someone who will really not synchronize with you, for example like with a computer," Winkler said, "you have the feeling that you can not communicate."
An infant's perception of rhythm may make him receptive to the distinctively human tendency to teach, Winkler said. "Apes never teach," he said, explaining that baby apes learn by simply emulating their parents. But humans engage in a sing-song form of information exchange, where the recipient of new knowledge must respond in a synchronous way (not too fast, not too slow) to convey understanding.
Therefore, evolution may have favored brains wired to rock for learning purposes, said Winkler, and "music went along for the ride."
© 2009 LiveScience.com. All rights reserved.
MSN Privacy . Legal© 2009 MSNBC.com
Let’s rock! Even newborns can follow a rhythm
Infant brain responds with error signal when beat is disturbed, study finds
By Robin Nixon
LiveScience
Newborns can follow a rhythm, a new study has found, suggesting rocking out is innate.
The finding, published in the Jan. 26 issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, adds to growing evidence that the newborn brain is not the blank slate it was once thought to be.
Rather, scientists have shown, at birth we already have sophisticated methods for interpreting the world. Discrimination may be crude, explained lead researcher István Winkler of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in Budapest, but "the basic algorithms are in place already."
This may be particularly true when it comes to sound. Infants as young as 2 days old can process pitch and tell if a series of notes are rising or falling in scale. And it is now known they have rhythm, too.
Newborns can't exactly swing their hips to prove they can jive, so Winkler and his colleague Henkjan Honing of the University of Amsterdam monitored the brains of 14 infants listening to variations of a rock rhythm — complete with drum, snare and high hat cymbal.
When "metrically-unimportant portions" of the beat were silenced, nothing much changed among the auditory-related activity in the brain, Honing said. But when the rhythm was disturbed, particularly by omitting the downbeat, the infant brain responded with an error signal: An expectation for a rhythmic pattern was not met.
"A baby's auditory system is working the same way as an adult's, in that it is always making predictions," Winkler said. If the prediction is incorrect, an error signal helps gauge "how much you are off the actual target," he said.
Perceiving emotion while spoken language can take more than a year to develop, "music is one of the earliest things parents have with their children," Honing said. On a note-to-note level, adult speech usually lacks the pulsing regularity of music, but when parents talk to babies, they instinctively switch to melodic and rhythmic intonations "as a way of communicating emotional messages," Honing said.
Infants can perceive anger, happiness and sadness from a caregiver's cooing and baby babble, he said. A study last year found that babies as young as 5 months can distinguish an upbeat tune, such as "Ode to Joy" from Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, from other gloomy tunes.
At a structural level, certain conversation protocols require rhythmic synchrony and are likely unique to humans, Winkler said. While other animals, such as birds and frogs, do have significant auditory skills, few, if any, perceive rhythm or carry on a dialogue, he said. "If you ever talk to someone who will really not synchronize with you, for example like with a computer," Winkler said, "you have the feeling that you can not communicate."
An infant's perception of rhythm may make him receptive to the distinctively human tendency to teach, Winkler said. "Apes never teach," he said, explaining that baby apes learn by simply emulating their parents. But humans engage in a sing-song form of information exchange, where the recipient of new knowledge must respond in a synchronous way (not too fast, not too slow) to convey understanding.
Therefore, evolution may have favored brains wired to rock for learning purposes, said Winkler, and "music went along for the ride."
© 2009 LiveScience.com. All rights reserved.
MSN Privacy . Legal© 2009 MSNBC.com
Monday, January 19, 2009
WHAT ARE WE LEARNING IN CLASS?
Language and Movement: Pairing language with movement sets the stage for cognitive and kinesthetic learning. The right hemisphere of the brain is our emotional side where much of our creativity is channeled. The left hemisphere organizes logical skills, such as language. When children are engaged in movements determined by the lyrics, the brain automatically cross references both hemispheres, mapping creativity and logic. (Fishburne, G. 1988).
Friday, January 16, 2009
Story from a mom in Tennessee
Discovering more than Music at Clarksville’s Kindermusik class.
By Beth Britton January 15, 2009
This morning Elle-Girl and I attended an event held in an upstairs practice room at the incredibly renovated new Mary’s Music Store downtown. The event was a preview Kindermusik class taught by Tiffany Hilliker. Kindermusik is a free form way of teaching children music by positive parent interaction and helping form a well rounded child. The class starts out with a happy hello song where you bounce your young child in your lap while singing “Hello” to the other children. The class then continues to teach predictable routine practices and interactive song and dance opportunities. The children get to experience different musical instruments and play with bright colorful streamers. The classes are completely child centered, however I must admit, the parent has a really good time as well.
As a mother of a busy toddler I thought that Elle-Girl would really get into this class. She always dances whenever music is on, she enjoys throwing mommy’s scarves up in the air and running through them, and loves singing silly songs and playing the drums on pots and pans.
However, the morning did not play out how I had imagined it. Elle-Girl did not want to sit in my lap during the “Hello” song, nor did she feel like sharing the plush puppy dog during the Sharing song. Sharing is really not a typical thing for children this age to do anyway, but some how the other toddlers in the group were than happy to pass the dog around. At one point a small duck was pulled out of Mrs. Hilliker’s box of plush animals and the usually reserved little Elle-Girl, who I swear to you has NEVER taken another toy from a child promptly stood, plush puppy dog still in hand, and took the duck from her “sharing buddy” Hayden. I didn’t feel it was necessary to try to explain Elle-Girl’s long time passion for things that go “Quack” I just quickly tried to resolve the situation.
After a cool down period with a quiet little Japanese Lullaby song, in which Elle-Girl stood looking at all the other children laying down as if to say “If you think I’m laying down for a nap at 10 in the morning, you’re crazy!” ,we all gathered together to hold hands and dance in a circle. Guess who was standing outside of the circle? Elle-Girl.
Tiffany instructed me to go ahead and join the circle, and perhaps when Elle-girl sees how much fun I’m having she will want to join. With a doubtful smile I joined in with the other mothers and their children and danced and skipped in a circle. While we were heading around and around I happen to notice what my child was doing, she was dancing along with us, but in her own circle. Even going in the direction we were going and stopping and doing the all the motions with us. I wanted her to join me, I wanted her to be like everyone else. Just then the mother beside me said something that I think will stay with me for a long time, she commented on how she was her own circle, and “what would the world be like if we didn’t have women like Oprah, or Hillary Clinton, that moved to their own circle?” you could also add women like Rosa Parks, Barbara Walters, Amelia Earhart, or my favorite Annie Lebowitz. At that moment, I found joy in my little independent girl, who has her own ideas and enjoys other children, but does not feel like she has to do what they are doing. I hope she always feels free to dance in her own circle.
I would encourage any parent to give Kindermusik a try. You never know what your child will discover there, or what you may discover about your child!
By Beth Britton January 15, 2009
This morning Elle-Girl and I attended an event held in an upstairs practice room at the incredibly renovated new Mary’s Music Store downtown. The event was a preview Kindermusik class taught by Tiffany Hilliker. Kindermusik is a free form way of teaching children music by positive parent interaction and helping form a well rounded child. The class starts out with a happy hello song where you bounce your young child in your lap while singing “Hello” to the other children. The class then continues to teach predictable routine practices and interactive song and dance opportunities. The children get to experience different musical instruments and play with bright colorful streamers. The classes are completely child centered, however I must admit, the parent has a really good time as well.
As a mother of a busy toddler I thought that Elle-Girl would really get into this class. She always dances whenever music is on, she enjoys throwing mommy’s scarves up in the air and running through them, and loves singing silly songs and playing the drums on pots and pans.
However, the morning did not play out how I had imagined it. Elle-Girl did not want to sit in my lap during the “Hello” song, nor did she feel like sharing the plush puppy dog during the Sharing song. Sharing is really not a typical thing for children this age to do anyway, but some how the other toddlers in the group were than happy to pass the dog around. At one point a small duck was pulled out of Mrs. Hilliker’s box of plush animals and the usually reserved little Elle-Girl, who I swear to you has NEVER taken another toy from a child promptly stood, plush puppy dog still in hand, and took the duck from her “sharing buddy” Hayden. I didn’t feel it was necessary to try to explain Elle-Girl’s long time passion for things that go “Quack” I just quickly tried to resolve the situation.
After a cool down period with a quiet little Japanese Lullaby song, in which Elle-Girl stood looking at all the other children laying down as if to say “If you think I’m laying down for a nap at 10 in the morning, you’re crazy!” ,we all gathered together to hold hands and dance in a circle. Guess who was standing outside of the circle? Elle-Girl.
Tiffany instructed me to go ahead and join the circle, and perhaps when Elle-girl sees how much fun I’m having she will want to join. With a doubtful smile I joined in with the other mothers and their children and danced and skipped in a circle. While we were heading around and around I happen to notice what my child was doing, she was dancing along with us, but in her own circle. Even going in the direction we were going and stopping and doing the all the motions with us. I wanted her to join me, I wanted her to be like everyone else. Just then the mother beside me said something that I think will stay with me for a long time, she commented on how she was her own circle, and “what would the world be like if we didn’t have women like Oprah, or Hillary Clinton, that moved to their own circle?” you could also add women like Rosa Parks, Barbara Walters, Amelia Earhart, or my favorite Annie Lebowitz. At that moment, I found joy in my little independent girl, who has her own ideas and enjoys other children, but does not feel like she has to do what they are doing. I hope she always feels free to dance in her own circle.
I would encourage any parent to give Kindermusik a try. You never know what your child will discover there, or what you may discover about your child!
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