Curiosity, Questions and Quality Time

How do we teach young children to think? to be creative? to ask questions? to be curious? Come watch this Sprouting Melodies Sing at Home video for some thoughts and of course another brand new song for you to sing with your child.

There’s Something New About Me     E.K. Schwartz 2014

There’s something new about me.  Just look and you will see. There’s something new about me.  I’m learning to be me!

My hands are clapping;  My feet are tapping; And I can tell you  ‘yes’ or ‘no’.

My hands are clapping; My feet are tapping; And I am ready to go!

There’s something new about me. It happens every day.There’s something new about me. And I have lots to say.

My hands are clapping;  My feet are tapping; And I can tell you  ‘yes’ or ‘no’.

My hands are clapping; My feet are tapping; And I am ready to go!

There’s something new about me. Just look from head to toe. There’s something new about me. Come watch me as I grow.

My hands are clapping;  My feet are tapping; And I can tell you  ‘yes’ or ‘no’.

My hands are clapping; My feet are tapping; And I am ready to go!

There’s something new about me.  Just look and you will see. There’s something new about me.  I’m learning to be me!

Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday!

This month Raising Harmony turns 2! It was a crisp, sunny February day in Boston when Meredith and I shook hands and signed the documents that began the journey of creating a place to support, share and celebrate early childhood music therapy.

Like any two-year-old, Raising Harmony is growing and moving fast.

Who has nurtured this growth? You!

It is through your backing and encouragement that we have been able to train almost 100 board-certified music therapists in understanding and serving the children and families of their communities. The seeds that these trainings have planted are coming into bloom with a growing number of Sprouting Melodies Providers all around the country. Read about your colleagues who have already launched a program on Sprouting Melodies Find a Class Page.

Here is a Birthday gift for you!

You Play A Little Download

This has been one of my most popular song interventions. Some of you may have heard me present it at conferences. It is one of the songs from “You and Me Makes…We: A Growing Together Songbook”.  I am so happy to be able to share it with you a birthday present and I hope that you will pass it along to your children and their families. 

And make sure you visit www.RaisingHarmony.com and click the link on the right to get five free song downloads.  Each song comes with full notation and some ideas on how to get the most meaningful interactions as you sing them with young children and families/

Here’s to another great year of transformation and growth!

Beth

 
 

 

Going After Gold – What the Olympics Tell Me Not to Do

I have never been a big fan of watching sports, especially not on television. (Well, I did watch the Super Bowl commercials!)  It was a little easier for me in person, but at my son’s early baseball games I remember that I would watch the other parents from the team and shout and clap when they did. Peter Jumping

The Winter Olympics, though, is an exception.  The pictures that you see with this article are not of some random athlete. They are of my nephew who is a ski jumper on Team USA. This is his second time at the Olympic Games. The event is only one of the many competitions he enters each year as he travels around the world in search of that elusive top spot.

As my sister and other family members were leaving for Sochi Russia, the rest of the family were sending along their “Best wishes” and “Good Luck” as well as the signature phrase “Fly long.” For some reason I asked my sister what she would say to her grown son right before the first jump.  She quietly told me that her final word of encouragement to him is always “Relax”.

Jennie and Peter

Later on as I watched the talking head commentators weigh in on the merits of each contestant, I heard the same sentiment echoed again and again. “She wants it too much. She needs to just relax.” “He is not focusing on what he needs to do. He should just relax and keep his head in the moment.” What a contradiction! In order to go after the gold, you need to let go of thinking about going after the gold.

I began to mull over this conundrum in terms of my own work as a music therapist and as a provider of developmental music experiences for young children and their families. My responsibility in this work is to help children meet individual goals or gain developmental milestones. I feel the burden of ‘making progress’ or ‘meeting benchmarks’ all the time.

But what I have found is that if I go into a session rigidly determined to have the child meet a certain goal it almost always backfires.  I get too involved in one little response and how “I can make that happen”.  Neither the child nor I get fully involved in the music. The harder I try, the less seems to occur. Conversely when the session is fun and engaging and satisfying musically for everyone, the child intrinsically responds in the way I had hoped for when designing the experience.

You would think that after almost twenty-five years in the field, I would remember this. But I know that I frequently slip and slide down the slope toward checking off items on a list rather than being present and responsive to the child in the musical moment.

Olympic Flag

So, here is what watching the Olympic Games has taught me to ‘do’ and’ not to do’ that I hope to take into my early childhood music work.

1. Go for the Gold

Go for the gold, don’t go after the gold. Envision the moments of pure musical joy in which each child and grownup is fully engaged. See in your mind the ‘fist-pump’ of elation when everyone is making meaningful music together.  Know what each child needs with a clear picture of how that music will look, sound and feel.

2. Create a Training Plan

Figure out the steps and elements needed to get to those great musical moments. Find a coach or mentor to help you. This could be a real person or a book, article or blog. Make sure the steps, or the music experiences, you create will lead to the ultimate goal.

3. Practice, Practice, Practice

This means you as the music therapist or music leader, more than the child, need to practice before each session. The music experiences become part of your musical self. The music is not something that you place ‘on’ the child. It is something that becomes second-nature and free that you share with the child.

4. Relax and Fly Long

Finally you are at the top of the mountain or on the oval of ice or in the circle of children. All of the work preparing for the music now needs to be put aside. Relax! Trust yourself and trust the music. Most importantly, trust that within the music experience, the child will be able to pull out all the stops and rise up to their potential.

Sochi Russia

So even with all the talk about gold medals, the Olympic athletes tell me that to be successful you need to let go of the medal and focus on the moment.

Go team!

Beth

Time Marches On…And So Do Young Kids

New Year's sunglasses in the outline of 2014.

Happy New Year!

Once again, I watched the Times Square festivities from a comfortable, warm couch. The television showed thousands of people dancing the minutes away until midnight. The music was pumping loud and rhythmic. The crowds looked energized and focused toward the deadline separating old from new. As excited as everyone seemed, though, the music at the stroke of midnight turned nostalgic and almost wistful. While I drifted off to sleep (the first activity to bring in the new year for me), I started thinking about the mixed emotions that surround wanting to move forward and wanting things to stay the same. [Read more…]

Spin Around. Fall Down. Musical Structure and Sensory Challenges.

Have you ever played the Dreidel game?

Or used the Dreidel song in your early childhood music groups? It is a well-known and popular children’s song and game sung during the Jewish holiday of Chanukah.

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                I have a little Dreidel

                I made it out of clay [Read more…]

Early Music Experiences: Do We Need Plastic Trophies?

As a parent, I had to make a lot of choices about what experiences I would give my kids as they grew up.  Maybe it wasn’t really as much of a choice as I thought, since I had grown up in a family where three things counted: Family; hard work; and music.  So those were the things that I most wanted to pass down to my kids. [Read more…]

School Readiness: Music as a Key Ingredient in Effective Early Learning Environments

I walked into an early childhood classroom recently and saw a scene that at first made me shudder, and next made me think of the much mentioned term – ‘school readiness’.  The young teacher was sitting in the usual place surrounded by props and puppets and pleasant visuals.  From the pictures on the easel board, it was obvious that she was in the middle of ‘teaching’ one of the core concepts from the school’s curriculum. [Read more…]

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