Cash strapped schools make a mistake to cut music

And cash strapped families too....private lessons and classes like Kindermusik can mean the difference between a so-so musician and a musician that can really play and use their ears on a more advanced level....And can make the difference between a so-so reader and a reader who enjoys a higher academic success!

More and more research shows how music is a powerful tool for helping children reach their potential....(when I grow up I will be a neuroscientist so that I can understand all this....)

Well, someday........

But reading online about what researchers are saying happens in the brain when musicians use their ears helped me to focus the 3 1/2 year olds in our Imagine That! class this week as we are listening to layers of sound (water making waves, the bell bouy, the sea lions, and the work boat horn) and then listening to the music with the singer (the words to the song, the drum beating, the rattling percussion, the man's voice, etc) listening to many layers at once.......

"Playing an instrument may help youngsters better process speech in noisy classrooms and more accurately interpret the nuances of language that are conveyed by subtle changes in the human voice," says Nina Kraus, Hugh Knowles Professor of Neurobiology, Physiology and Communication Sciences at Northwestern University.....

Studies in Kraus' laboratory indicate that music -- a high-order cognitive process -- affects automatic processing that occurs early in the processing stream. "The brainstem, an evolutionarily ancient part of the brain, is modified by our experience with sound," says Kraus. "Now we know that music can fundamentally shape our subcortical sensory circuitry in ways that may enhance everyday tasks, including reading and listening in noise."

Read it all here.
And if you'd like to hear one of Nina Kraus' lecture click here (it's very interesting!)

All tuckered out....

All this hopping like frogs and dancing like elephants has me completely wiped out this week.....
I tried to study up but just couldn't keep my eyes open.

Do you have to be a gifted musician?

Would you ever say to a child: "You aren't mathematical. You just don't have that gift for math so why don't you try something else?" Of course NOT! We expect all children to achieve a certain level of math.

Why do we NOT expect that all children will achieve a certain level of music fluency? Especially now as we have research that proves that music training improves math scores, reading scores and SCORES of other measurements for scores of other intelligence indicators. Why? How can schools say "We have no money for a music program?" or "We can only afford music for the first half of the year. We'll do visual art for the second half."

Reading music and pitch matching improves reading scores:

TUNEin™ to READING comes alive on our video! See our software in action and meet students, educators and literacy experts who explain how and why it makes such a dramatic difference for struggling readers.

What could be better? Well, I think that "better" would be all the joy endocrines that a student would get singing in a top notch school choir...where the director would help them realize the thrill of matching pitches, making harmony, grooving with intensity...making music together...yes, that would be the best.

Lindley Junior School Choir - Simple Gifts

Coventry Blue Coat School Choir singing Bright Morning Stars Are Rising:

What do you suppose their reading scores are like?
Wait, that's not the right way to be thinking...

I'll bet the LOVE to read.

Preliteracy skills:

Here's more that I found following some links on the Puckett Institute site about working with infants on preliteracy skills. It's another affirmation for what we do in our Kindermusik classes!
Preliteracy Development

The period of development from birth to approximately
12–15 months of age includes a child’s acquisition
of a number of important communication and literacyrelated
skills, including, but not limited to, joint attention,
nonverbal (gestural) communication, vocalizations (cooing
and babbling), speech and language perception, and
phoneme speech stem acquisition. Schickedanz (1999), in
her book Much More than the ABCs, describes looking and
recognizing, picture recognition and comprehension, book
handling and play, and child behavior during story reading
as some of the preliteracy behavior that infants master
on their way to becoming literate. The kinds of activities
that are the contexts for preliteracy development include,
but are not limited to, parent/child lap games, singing to
infants, word play, and touching and talking (Armbruster,
Lehr, & Osborn, 2003b; Parlakian, 2003).

From:
Framework for Developing Evidence-Based
Early Literacy Learning Practices
Carl J. Dunst
Carol M. Trivette
Tracy Masiello
Nicole Roper
Anya Robyak

RIDDLE:

What's the difference between a Violin and a Fiddle?












(the fiddle player smiles!)

Here's our story time this week!




Part two:




What cute little "piggies".

Music for the brain: Start NOW

• A 2000 Georgia Tech study indicates that a student who participates in at least one college elective music course is 4.5 times more likely to stay in college than the general student population.
  – Dr. Denise C. Gardner, Effects of Music Courses on Retention, Georgia Tech, 2000

• The part of the brain responsible for planning, foresight, and coordination is substantially larger for instrumental musicians than for the general public.
  – “Music On the Mind,” Newsweek, July 24, 2000

• A research team exploring the link between music and intelligence reports that music training - specifically piano instruction - is far superior to computer instruction in dramatically enhancing children’s abstract reasoning skills necessary for learning math and science.
  – Dr. Frances Rauscher and Dr. Gordon Shaw, Neurological Research, University of California at Irvine, February, 1997

• Physician and biologist Lewis Thomas studied the undergraduate majors of medical school applicants. He found that sixty- six percent (66%) of music majors who applied to medical school were admitted, the highest percentage of any group. Forty-four percent (44%) of biochemistry majors were admitted.
  – “The Case for Music in the Schools,” Phi Delta Kappan, 1994

• College students majoring in music achieve scores higher than students of all other majors on college reading exams.
  – Carl Hartman, “Arts May Improve Students’ Grades,” The Associated Press, October, 1999

• Music students demonstrate less test anxiety and performance anxiety than students who do not study music.
  – “College-Age Musicians Emotionally Healthier than Non-Musician Counterparts,” Houston Chronicle, 1998

• On the 1999 SAT, music students continued to outperform their non-arts peers, scoring 61 points higher on the verbal portion and 42 points higher on the math portion of the exam.
  – Steven M. Demorest and Steven J. Morrison, “Does Music Make You Smarter?,” Music Educators Journal, September, 2000

• Researchers at the University of Muenster in Germany have discovered that music lessons in childhood actually enlarge parts of the brain. An area used to analyze the pitch of a musical note is enlarged 25% in musicians compared to people who have never played an instrument. The earlier the musicians were when they started musical training, the bigger this area of the brain appears to be.
  – Pantev et al., Nature, April 23, 1998

• Research shows when a child listens to classical music the right hemisphere of the brain is activated, but when a child studies a musical instrument both left and right hemispheres of the brain “light up.” Significantly, the areas that become activated are the same areas that are involved in analytical and mathematical thinking.
  – Dee Dickinson, “Music and the Mind,” New Horizons for Learning, 1993

• The Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania School District analyzed its 1997 dropout rate in terms of students’ musical experience. Students with no ensemble performance experience had a dropout rate of 7.4 percent. Students with one to two years of ensemble experience had a dropout rate of 1 percent, and those with three or more years of performance experience had a dropout rate of 0.0 percent.
  – Eleanor Chute, “Music and Art Lessons Do More Than Complement Three R’s,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, April 13, 1998

These quotes I found here at UAH's Music auditions webpage. It's this article: Why Study Music? by Dr. Don Bowyer and the whole page is fun to read.

Music Boosts Reading Skills

Kindermusik International has posted on line some of the latest finding concerning music and the power of music when it comes to learning....Right now the link between music and reading (in the coming weeks you'll find music and math research).

Go!!!! to Kindermusik online to find out more.

And you know WHY I want you to know? Because I believe Kindermusik is an investment in your children that won't plunge like the stock market or devalue like cash under the mattress. This is a "Good Beginning That Never Ends..." You parents are investing in our country's greatest resource!
THE CHILDREN!!!