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.
Who’s More Stressed? The screaming toddler being strapped into their car seat? Or the parent trying to strap the toddler in?
I say, both. At this time of year which is supposed to be so magical, it sure seems as if there is a lot of stress out there.
What can I, a music therapist, do about it? A lot!
In my decades of running early childhood music groups, I was always amazed at the transformation from the beginning to the end – usually stress to smiles. In developmentally focused music making, we can help parents to better understand their child and give them both a safe and supportive space just to ‘be.’
This is one reason we started the Sprouting Melodies Training. The course makes use of your expertise as a music therapist, and gives you the knowledge, experiences, and music you need to serve the children and families of your community.
What’s unique about the Sprouting Melodies Training? We focus on both the child and the parent as people. Me and Me…Meaningful expectations. Music for engagement.
The Sprouting Melodies® program offers music therapists a chance to use your education, skills and experience to bring the best possible early childhood music experience to families in your community.
23 CMTEs available for you to complete in your own space, in your own time.
Registration is now open for January 2023!
What exactly do you get in the course?
Ready to register for the Sprouting Melodies Training?
We can wait to see you inside the Sprouting Melodies training!
~ Elizabeth & Meredith
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.
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:
Meredith and I not only love our careers. We love our profession! Both of us are committed to giving back to the American Music Therapy through service and sharing our expertise. But AMTA 2017 might be our busiest year yet!
Here is the line up. If you are traveling to the AMTA conference in St. Louis, please stop us for a chat. If you would like to know more about any of the presentations, send us an email next week. We would love to know all about how YOU support the profession.
Nov 15, 2017 12:30 pm – 05:30 pm
Presenter(s): Meredith Pizzi, MPA, MT-BC; Alicia Ann Clair, PhD, MT-BC, Anthony Meadows, PhD, LPC, MT-BC, Deanna Bush, MM, MT-BC; Kamica King, MT-BC
November 16, 2017
Presenter(s): Meredith Pizzi, MPA, MT-BC; Annette Whitehead-Pleaux, MA, MT-BC; Katie Bagley, MT-BC; Laetitia Brundage, MT-BC
November 17, 2017 8:00 am-9:15 am
Presenter(s): Varvara Pasiali, PhD, MT-BC; Elizabeth K. Schwartz, MA, LCAT, MT-BC
November 17, 2017 2:15 pm-3:30 pm
Presenter(s): Meredith R. Pizzi, MPA, MT-BC; Ronna Kaplan, MA, MT-BC
November 18, 2017 3:15 pm-4:30 pm
Presenter(s): Helen Dolas, MS, MT-BC; Ellary Draper, PhD, MT-BC; Grant Hales, MT-BC; Meredith Pizzi, MPA, MT-BC; Tom Sweitzer, MA, MT-BC
November 19, 2017 9:30 am-10:45 am
Presenter(s): Meredith R. Pizzi, MPA, MT-BC; Elizabeth K. Schwartz, MA, LCAT, MT-BC
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 always looked forward to the change of seasons. Fall to winter. Winter to spring. Especially spring to summer when school let out and everything seemed more relaxed and care-free. But as a music therapist, I have learned that the children and families that I work with do not get a break from the challenges that they face. The preschool program in which I work runs year round so that the children will have the consistent support that they require.
Even though I know that this is often best for the children, I get sad when the children or families tell me that they don’t have the time or energy for normal fun. Fun, like going to the beach to swim. So if the children can’t get to the beach, how about bringing the beach to them? We don’t need actual sand and water, we just need music that gives the feeling of the waves and surf.
Here is a new song you can use this summer. It relies on mixing the meters of 2 and 3 to give the sense of momentum and flow that we feel in the cool water. Give it a try with instruments or lovely flowing scarves. I use one that I picked up on a vacation a long time ago.
Enjoy!
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.
