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Blow, Blow, Blow away….

liltunes — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 12:12:20 +0000

Breathing is as fundamental as life. We take our first breath as new born babies. However, many of us never learn how to breathe using 100% of our lungs. In fact, a significant number of people – not only children – fill in only 60% of their lungs with a deep breath. If we can teach our children to breathe with their diaphrams and not by lifting their shoulders, we are teaching them good breath control which helps with speaking, reading out loud, projecting their voice and singing.

What can you do at home?

Put on your favourite piece of music and blow a balloon around the room.
Put feathers on a table and blow it across to the other end.
Blow bubbles to a piece of classical music
Sing a line from a song and them hum the tune.

Always remember, when breathing in, the tummy should come out and the shoulders stay flat. When breathing out, the tummy goes in. Blow, blow, blow those blues away.

Music and Fine/Gross Motor Development

liltunes — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 12:01:00 +0000

“How can music help develop fine motor skills for my child?”, is a question that many a parent has asked. Music and singing is not only a fun way to interact and play with your child, it is great for developing not only their musical skills but also fine and gross motor skills. Have you ever wondered how you can remember the words of songs learnt in childhood but cannot remember your 12 times tables? Any activity set to music helps the brain retain and remember that information over the long term.

So what activities can you do at home with your child?

“Heads, shoulders, knees and toes” is always a fun place to start labelling parts of the body and getting children to move.
Songs involving finger plays are a great way to develop fine motor skills. Songs like “Where is Thumbkin?”, “Five Little Ducks”, and ‘Five Cheeky Monkeys” will encourage your child to start viewing their fingers as separate entities instead of a whole hand.
Put on a favourite piece of music and march, jump, or roll around the room. What a wonderful way to play and bond with your child while encouraging more balanced movement.
Singing songs with actions like “Incy Wincy Spider” develops fine and gross motor skills for your child.

So get out your music, and your singing voice and have fun with your child everyday at home. A wonderful and fun wayfor your child to learn with you.

Tune my brain mum…

liltunes — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 23:50:21 +0000

The area of the brain that deals with congnitive development is turned on with varied physical movement and activity. So parents, just by increasing the scope and type of physical activities that you do with your child, you are literally turning on their brain! Swirling, whirling, swooshing, hopping and rocking actually stimulate neural pathways in your child’s brain. Some easy and fun activities that you can do with your children are:

Infants

Play a piece of music and carefully supporting your baby’s head and body, whirl around gently and stop. Then gently whirl around in the other direction. Repetition with the start and stop will turn baby’s brain on!

Toddlers

Any parent with a toddler identifies with the sentiment, “my child never stops!”. This is a very normal part of your child’s development where their brain is telling their body to practice walking and running till they get it right! For this age group, hopping, jumping and twirling are great activities to do with your child to their favourite piece of music. It is also the best way to teach them new vocabulary by saying and then doing an action. Kangaroo hops are always a great favourite with this age group.

Preschooler

Your preschooler with their enquiring mind and many questions is the perfect sponge. Their imaginitive minds need to be encouraged so that their brain can explore and create making for great writers, artists, inventors and entrepreneurs of our future! The easiest and most fun way to turn on their imagination is to play different kinds of music, and encourage them to make up different dances with different household props. They can dance and bang on a pot with a wooden spoon, flutter around with dish cloths or zig zag with the mop!

You will be amazed at the amount of fun that you can have with your children doing the simplest of activities in your home. No more “I’m bored!” times, or grizzly times and all the time, you are stimulating your child’s brain!

Swish, wiggle and flick…

liltunes — Tue, 04 May 2010 01:46:09 +0000

During the early part of a child’s life, gross motor activities dominate their repertoire of movement activities with crawling and then walking being their primary objective. As your child grows, parents need to focus and encourage activities that develop fine motor activities. These skills are essential for a child to gain fine control over their hands and fingers to be able to do activities like puzzles, colouring, and writing.

Fine Motor Musical Movement Idea’s that are fun…

We have all enjoyed the song “If You’re Happy and You Know It”. Clapping, particularly for a very young child, encourages very controlled movement of their hands to bring their palms together and make a sound. At this point, it is a great idea to do Wiggling fingers , which are exercising and separating their fingers since children at this age think their hand is a single entity that moves in its entirety. “If You’re Hpaay And You Know It Flick your fingers” again exercises their fingers and develops strength to enable them to grip a pencil and start drawing and colouring with control.

So a boring wait at the doctor’s can turn into a fun and musical time developing fine motor skills with your child.

Crawl and Learn…

liltunes — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 02:31:35 +0000

Most parents recognise crawling as one of the milestones for their child. However, few realise how important this is and that it is done correctly and often.

Crawling is a cross lateral movement which activates the development of the nerve pathways between the two hemispheres of the brain, ie it gets both the sides of the body working together – arms, legs, eyes and ears. Crawling gives the child their first experiences with in and out, under and over, forward and backward. There are studies that have shown that children who have never crawled have trouble with balance activities like walking, running and riding a bike later on, and also exhibit some learning difficulties.

There are many fun activities that parents can do to encourage and develop crawling with their child.

Lap Babies

Give your baby lots of tummy time. This develops their back, shoulder, arm and leg muscles enabling them to crawl.
With baby on their tummy, crawl toward them singing a favourite song or nursery rhyme and interact by touching or tickling baby during the song.

Crawler/Walker

Play a “You can’t Catch Me” crawling and singing game. Encourage your child to crawl and catch you and give them a big hug and sing “You Caught Me!!” Then reverse roles and try and catch your child.
While singing “London Bridge is Falling Down”, make a tunnel with your body and encourage your baby or toddler to crawl through the tunnel. On “All Fall Down”, let your body tunnel carefully fall down (once your child is safely through!).

Getting your baby ready to speak…

liltunes — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 02:09:56 +0000

Your baby’s lungs and diaphram are developing every time they take a breath. Blowing long and short breaths is one of the ways to further develop and strengthen the diaphram. This is essential for baby to start making sounds and speaking. Try some blowing activities with your baby. They will enjoy the cool sensation of you blowing on their face or body. Get close to baby’s face and let them see and feel your mouth while you gently blow. Slowly as baby grows, they will be able to reflect and repeat this activity with you.

Even though baby is not able to blow as yet, blowing play lets baby visually track an object, developing stronger eye muscles. There are many common things around the house that you can use to blow across the floor or a mat. A few ideas are: tissue paper, feathers, bits of cloth, cellphane paper, cotton. For Safety Reasons please supervise your child closely during Blowing Play so that they do not get any of the items in their nose, ears or mouth.

Introduce tempo to your child

liltunes — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 03:50:17 +0000

One of the fundamental aspects of music is tempo, ie. the speed at which the music is playing which can be measured by the number of beats per minute. When playing different kinds of music, try and notice if your child enjoys fast and slow music equally, or if he prefers one extreme over the other. It is important for his understanding of music and language that he hears and feels a range of tempi.

To expose your child to differign tempo’s, choose a favourite song and sing it slowly (adagio) with him, using big slow movements. Sing the same song again quickly (allegro) with smaller movements. Alternate between the two extremes. Then gradually go from adagio (slow pace) to andante (walking pace) t0 allegro (quick pace).

The most important thing is to have fun with your child, dancing around to different kinds of music that is set to different tempos. The more fun that you have, the more fun and learning that is taking place for your child.

Singing and Chanting with your Child

liltunes — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 02:26:42 +0000

Singing and chanting are long-term musical goals that begin at birth and develop through careful attention to the quality and nature of the sounds placed within the environemnt. A newborns singing experience is one of rapt listening. The parent’s goal is to nurture baby’s developing ability to produce sound, combined with keeping his world full of a wide range of musical sounds. This provided the foundation that assures the development of speaking, conversation and singing ability.

As children grow between the ages of 18 months to 3 years, they are in the stage of vocal development that some specialists refer to as “approximation of singing”. This is where they attempt to imitate a word or a rhythm pattern which is easily missed because it rarely occurs in precise coordination with a singing activity! Rather this often occurs when the child is engrossed and playing by himself, humming tunes they have absorbed from their environment. It is important that parents recognise the importance of this ‘musical play’ for it is only by this that they master the muscular feel of singing.

A Wiggly Giggly Start to the Term!!

liltunes — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 02:05:21 +0000

Our theme for this Semester in the Kindermusik Our Time class for all my 18 month to 3 year olds – Wiggles and Giggles – is very apt!! Be warned, that if you attend this class, you will wiggle, and giggle, and tickle, and laugh and dance and have a really good time. The Finger Plays are a lot of fun (and quite tricky for the younger children) as we encouraged them to move to a steady beat. Lots of moving up and down the ocean with our Little Fish and Big Fish with an introduction into ascending and descending pitches. Lots of instrument playing to our French Folk Song ensured the kids had such a great time that they did not want to leave at the end! Looking forward to more wiggles and giggles next week!

New Term for the babies…

liltunes — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 00:04:28 +0000

What a wonderful start to the first Term of 2010!! All our babies were so enthusiastic and happy to be in class. Cock-A-Doodle-Moo is the theme for our Term and everyone got right into the farmyard experience. I think the adults had almost as much fun as the children Skipping to My Lou, banging on the drums to Yankee Doodle and even enjoying some tricky side steps to Shady Grove. I can see this term is going to be full of action. Bring it on my babies!!