center for early childhood music therapy, children's music therapy, music programs for infants, toddlers, preschoolers, music classes for young children, music therapists
Join Elizabeth Schwartz, MA, LCAT, MT-BC for the online event Together With The Beat: Expanding Your Early Childhood Music Toolbox. The event will take place via Zoom on Wednesday, August 30, 2023 from 8-9pm ET.
When Meredith and I started Raising Harmony, we were determined to provide solid, effective information on music, young children, and families. After hearing from the 100s of music therapists who have taken the Sprouting Melodies Training, we’ve learned that the training provides so much more. Through taking the training, people have:
What more can you do? Come join us for the next Sprouting Melodies Training and find out.
Click the link below to register for our next course beginning March 30, 2022.
https://raisingharmony.com/training/sprouting-melodies-training-info/
Hope to see you!
Elizabeth
Not ready for this round of training? Visit www.RaisingHarmony.com to download 5 free songs composed specifically for music therapists to learn and use.
Wow! What a year this has been. I have been thinking that 2021 is a little bit like the two-year-old’s I know – tantrums, tears, testing limits; but also times of incredible tenderness and tremendous growth.
Understanding development of little children is so helpful in understanding people in general. Want to know more? We’ve got a great course that gives you comprehensive information on development as well as music development. How to get that two-year-old to tune in? Covered. Getting parents, staff, and administrators to tune in? Covered. All this covered in our 23 CMTE credit, totally virtual Sprouting Melodies training course. Here is the link to register for our January 2022 course.
https://raisingharmony.com/training/sprouting-melodies-training-info/
Bonus! As part of the course, Meredith Pizzi, Erika Svolos, and I will meet with you virtually to answer questions or to brainstorm ideas and solutions. This would be a great time to learn more about successful ways to run Virtual Early Childhood groups. Yes, it can be done. And yes, you can get a two-year-old (and their grownups) to tune in!
Hope you will join us. Register by January 1st and receive an early-bird discount. Contact me directly with any questions Elizabeth@RaisingHarmony.com.
Here’s to 2022!
Elizabeth Schwartz
Have you ever wondered how music begins? How does a tiny infant learn music that helps them grow into a Grammy Award winner, or a basement band fan, or a music therapist? It’s not a secret. We know how music develops and how it becomes woven into a person’s identity. But we also know that many college programs don’t spend much time on music development. It’s only when you get out in the field that you realize that it would be something good to know.
In our Sprouting Melodies Training course, we lay it all out for you in a clear and practical framework. Each small music detail leads into the music making and then leads into a persuasive understanding of music in overall development. Right from the very start. In every session we give you new songs, music, and strategies that can be used in your work the very next day.
It’s not a secret. We’ve had well over 200 music therapists take the training, and we hear all the time how helpful the information is, no matter where you work.
It’s not a secret that this is really great training. Come and join us.
Beth and Meredith
Now more than ever, we need meaningful opportunities to be connected to others.
We search for ways to collaborate in creating innovative, creative programs.
And we seek flexible solutions to the challenges of staying current in a fast changing health-care environment.
Meredith, Erica, and I would like to welcome you to just such an environment through the Sprouting Melodies Training. Our newly updated and refreshed course begins Wednesday, April 1, 2020. The course provides you with:
It was five years ago today that Hurricane Sandy upended the lives of so many people in my community. October 29, 2012. Looking back, the way we helped young children through those early days stills rings true today. To all the children and families affected by Maria, Irma and Harvey – our hearts are with you.
Dark. Noisy. Confusing. Mom and Dad upset. No TV. Cold. The hurricane that roared through our area was really scary for so many little children. And scary for grownups, many of whom felt powerless both literally and figuratively. My friend Christine, shared these thoughts in an e-mail after returning to work at her pre-school – “So many staff members and family have lost everything at my site! People were crying in the halls in each other’s arms. A 4 year old girl told me there were fish and crabs swimming though her house.”
How can we help our children feel safe in a situation like this? How can we help our children feel safe if we don’t feel safe ourselves? This is a question for all grownups, including music therapists, who care for the young. I have been thinking about how music could be one answer in this situation and in other crises that children face. My music therapy colleague continued in the e-mail – “I spent a few hours considering how to structure my sessions. I decided not to start things I had planned on starting and focused on providing a sense of the familiar by doing the same gathering songs and music from two weeks ago. In some sessions we talked about the lights being out and being in a different house and how I’m still me. “Routine, reassurance and resilience.
Here at Raising Harmony we believe that making music is a natural part of development and that making music can help children develop. This includes a trait as important but as elusive as resilience. Resilience means that we support the little child in feeling, expressing, understanding, coping and creating solutions. In early childhood music therapy practice around the world, clinicians speak about the importance of prevention and early intervening in helping the child gain strength and health. We can give the child and family the opportunity to prevent long term difficulties from the emotional upheaval of a crisis through music and music making.
What does developing resilience sound like in music? Christine gave us some good ideas. Here are a few more thoughts.
Rhythm unifies and brings people together. The day I returned to work after the storm, I invited all the children and staff into one room. Sitting on the floor, I began to pat knees in a very matter-of –fact way. The children joined in first, followed by the staff. Slowly we began to sing a very familiar gathering song. The tempo was just as matter of fact, neither slow nor fast, but just right. The melody was fairly narrow in range. We kept the structure very predictable, just like we had always done. You could feel the children begin to relax and give into the compelling patterns. The message sent through the music was of trust and confidence. For just that musical moment, everything was going to be okay.
One little guy I work with struggles with any change in routine and reacts to any loud or sudden sounds with terror. Can you imagine what this storm meant to him? His family shared with me that it had been a terrible week after the storm. How could this child begin to express and begin to understand when I knew he couldn’t find the words to talk about fear? Well, we began at the piano with a favorite song- consonant harmony and triadic melody. Since we know each other well musically, I then took the musical risk of introducing a flatted sixth chord into the harmonic progression. We both jumped back from the piano and I sang “Scary”. The flatted six chord resolved to the flatted third, and finally the V7 and back to the tonic chord. The stage was set musically to feel the panic, then give a word and sound to describe the feeling, and then a resolution back to an area of comfort. He and I played this game again and again and again until he showed he was anticipating the unusual chord. This musical experience recognized and respected that something really traumatic had happened. But the pattern also allowed for the ‘scary’ to be resolved into something that this child could control.
To develop resilience for both this young boy and the group the music had one more job- to give voice to how to cope with problems and create solutions. That’s where songs came into play. Songs can be created that are specific to the child’s needs. Songs can be remembered and re-created by the child at times of stress. For this terrible storm, we adapted an old folk song:
“Shoo fly, don’t bother me. Shoo fly, don’t bother me. Shoo fly, don’t bother me. I want you to go away.” “Go away, cold, dark house. Go away, trees falling down. Go away noisy wind. Go away Hurricane Sandy.”
The melody is strong and the rhythm is crisp. The structure is clear and decisive. And like the music after the storm, so are the kids.
Have you worked through crisis with young children? Share some of your ideas and thoughts, because we all need to be ready for what life brings. Thanks, Christine for getting the conversation started!
I look forward to hearing from you.
Beth
I can’t believe that I was so sloppy in researching just how important clapping is to children and to all people! Just recently, I was trying to explain to a new intern how and why children clap. Of course I told her that I would send her some links to literature on early clapping from my previous writing. Guess what? There was nothing there! Yes, there were some references about when it should happen and lots of ideas of clapping interventions, but I glossed over clapping as if it were just another on the list of markers of early childhood development. Whoa! The children and families I work with use clapping as the ‘go-to’ musical response –way before they are willing or able to sing or play an instrument. How could I have been so blind to how important clapping is?
I felt a little better after doing a search of scholarly articles on clapping. Although my exploration was certainly not thorough, I couldn’t find the comprehensive neurological, physical, cognitive, emotional and social overview of clapping that I was hoping to find. So here are some thoughts about clapping as a vital human response. While I think about clapping within a musical context, clapping is about so much more- it is about the development of ‘self’. It helps me to think in categories so here are the four areas of clapping that I think of most with small children- Containment, Communication, Celebration and Community.
Infants come into the world wired to absorb. From the first, they take in sounds and smells and sights. The problem is that early on babies have few mechanisms to shut off the flow of experiences. When babies fuss or cry, it is often because they don’t have a way to understand or change the stuff that is thrown their way, whether it is a wet diaper or a great Aunt who comes just a little too close. It takes much of the infant’s first year for their body and mind to begin to gel into one operating system. A signal that they are starting to understand the boundaries of their body comes when the infant brings their palms together, and then begins to practice the movement which is the precursor of clapping. The sensitivity of the palms touching provides a way for the body to connect with itself. The baby starts to sense the line that defines themselves. Try really focusing while putting your palms together and see how it feels. It is no wonder that many of the world’s spiritual or religious movements use the palm-together gesture as a way to concentrate on deeper thoughts. I see many children with special needs use hand wringing or clapping in a way that makes me think that they are trying to find or define themselves. Independently using clapping as a way to contain can be very important in developing a healthy ‘self’.
Clapping is an outward gesture that we can see and feel and hear. So while clapping might start as helping a child with containment, it soon begins to take on meaning that other people can recognize. Spend time with a new family and you will hear the oohs and aahs when the new baby first smiles and first claps their hands. It is almost as if we need to see and hear these gestures to really believe that there is a ‘person’ inside. Babies soon begin to recognize that grownups respond when they bring their hands together. As the child grows and starts to make sounds with clapping they use the gesture to show pleasure or to get attention.
Adults also use clapping to communicate with children. A little one takes a first step, the grownup claps. They finish the food on their plate, and the grownup claps. The sound of clapping can also communicate a different message very clearly. I remember my mother who raised eight children without ever raising her voice. How did she let us know when she was displeased? A very loud sharp clapping sound that could be heard above the din of even the noisiest of days.
How did clapping become the way we celebrate? We clap to show appreciation, we clap at important events, we clap at concerts, and we clap at the end of movies. Why? In trying to answer that question, I found very little in the literature except to say that that is what humans do. When I observe young children, though, I think I can see where it comes from. When something excites us or moves us, our brain signals our bodies to express that excitement or stimulation. I think that clapping started as a way to let the energy out when our brains can no longer keep it in. Similar to dancing or jumping, clapping is a way to expel and dissipate energy.
For very young children, clapping can be a physical indication of intense emotions that they are not ready to express in other ways such as using words. Clapping as a unique gesture generally begins in the second half of the child’s first year. For the next few years, the child will clap sporadically and often non-rhythmically. It feels very spontaneous and seems to me to support that gesture as being a physical release. However, when I see little ones bringing their hands together in carefree and joyous movements, I can’t but help celebrate life!
Of the studies on clapping that I found, the use of clapping to support a sense of community and belonging was the most researched. I think I can now safely say that there is strong scientific evidence that synchronous movement is directly connected to social bonding. Clapping, along with dancing, might be the most ubiquitous synchronous movement in our current culture. Try ‘googling’ clapping and you will see page after page linking clapping to social, artistic, religious and sports gatherings.
For young children, the instinctual clap that starts as bringing the palms together gradually grows by about age four or five into the ability to clap in unison with others. They can control their gestures to make a musical sound and regulate the tempo to join in with everyone else. Through the clapping they become part of a community.
So I will go back to work with a renewed respect for all the stages and meanings of clapping for my young music makers and their families. And yes, I will probably clap for myself that I finally woke up to a better understanding of the seemingly simple gesture of clapping.
Enjoy clapping to the music!
Beth
P.S. Visit http://sproutingmelodies.com/2016/07/14/im-so-glad-to-be-me/ for a brand new song I wrote about the joy of clapping.
There was such a beautiful bird song outside the bedroom window the other day! Too bad it was 5 am in the morning. The initially sweet melody was very loud and went on and on and on. Since I couldn’t get back to sleep, I wrapped my mind around figuring out the intervals and the exact pitch of each sound. I tried to visualize the song as notation. This is not the easiest thing to do, especially at 5 am. Next came the inevitable question of why. What was the bird’s message? Was anything or anybody going to answer it so that I could go back to sleep? Why did the melody never waiver? What was that bird trying to say!?
Later in the day, and fortified with a number of cups of coffee, I surprised myself by going out of my way to listen to a similar pitched melody sung over and over and over again by the young babies in our school’s day care room. It too was difficult to pin down in terms of exact pitch, but the contour was unwavering. This time I worked hard to put aside my analytical mind, and tried to just enjoy the sounds. It was obvious that the babies were enjoying making these songs. They sang them again and again and again. Each time brought a fresh round of smiles, as if they were just discovering something new and exciting.
First birds, then babies, and later in the day I came across an article about the study of bats. (http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/baby-bats-babble-through-childhood-like-we-do/). It seems that baby bats begin life babbling away using pitched sounds and fragments of melody. The melodious babble is the way the bats begin to communicate. It isn’t until later, after learning from adults, that they develop a more sophisticated sequence of sounds that have precise meaning (to other bats anyway).
Before words, or concepts or gestures, there is pitch. Infants can process and match pitch within their first few months of life. Like bats, young babies begin to form meaning of their world through repeated and learned connection of pitch to context. But do we need to always view baby’s use of pitch as a means to an end? Is early pitch use only valuable when it leads to language?
Why do birds, and bats, and babies sing? Well, there are many, many scientists studying these questions looking to uncover meaning and purpose behind this behavior. But after trying to listen to the birds and babies the other day, I began to tell myself…they sing because they can. They sing because they do. They sing because it is in their nature to sing.
Although adults can begin to shape pitch into communication with external meaning, we can also celebrate the child’s natural motivation and ability to create pitch. We can and should view pitch as an important part of the child, separate from language or other meaning and unique in its communicative qualities.
Try and wrap your head around it as you go through your day. Here are some tips for listening for and valuing pure pitch play.
Enjoy the music!
Beth
