Money, money, money....

Kindermusik classes begin all next week! What is holding you back?
The most frequently asked question you all have been asking is:  

“My child loved your class and I know it is time so well spent with my child but our financial situation has made it impossible! Do you offer scholarship?“

I have been in your shoes! With my own children we scrimped and scraped to piece together their music education as a top priority because it is the BEST investment you can make. (Think about investing in the stock market or even putting money under your mattress—it’s value goes down!) Investing in your child will pay off in areas like higher SAT scores, leadership skills, and college scholarships. Imagine how I felt after my high school kids played in a concert and they were approached by a college recruiter! I thought that only happened with basketball and football players!!!

First, there’s always a payment option. We can break it down to 3 payments or chisel out what works best for your family.(I’m the human behind all this and if you just talk to me we can work it out!)

What if there’s just NO money to invest?
Let’s start a conversation to see how we can make this work. If you are able to take Kindermusik at either the Weaverville or Skyland locations I can start by offering a 35% scholarship. (Sorry for the Asheville Performing Arts Academy you would need to approach them personally.) I would really need you to fill out this form as it helps with fundraising for the scholarships. Disregard the due date as that does not apply to Kindermusik. The form also lists responsibilities that do not apply to Kindermusik. Please do not stay away because you think it’s not possible!

Let’s talk about this. Classes start very soon. (We prorate for starting after the first week.)

Your baby deserves this experience and we can make it happen.
Email me right away.
singandtwirl@gmail.com

Summer greetings to all my Kindermusik friends! I hope you are enjoying a musical summer, whether you are on our summer Kindermusik Zoo Train or driving across the land listening to your CDs or just singing and twirling together!
 This summer has been so full of music; quartets, duets and solos abound! I know many of you have asked me to give you heads up for family friendly live music events in the area.  Here's a very special concert "Love Notes for Haiti"  happening this Tuesday July 26, 7pm (it will be short) downtown at the Basilica of St. Lawrence. It's my own daughter, Claire, giving a violin recital here in Asheville. I'd love to share it with you. Scroll to the bottom of this post for all the details.

 Also I wanted to let you know that the fall schedule is live online . Don't  put off registering as I know certain classes will fill up.:-)
 One more great event ahead. This is a free event and I'm the speaker. I'll be talking about the parent's role in nurturing music education for their child.

Come join the Holistic Parenting Forum on Friday, August 5th from 6-8 pm in the Community room at the West Asheville Earth Fare. Our topic for August is: "Instrumental music education and cognitive development". Presented by Yvette Odell.  RSVP's requested.

It is becoming more widely known that a child's instrumental music education plays a big part in their cognitive development even to the point of boosting student's S.A.T. scores. Parents who hear this have many questions like:

"Really?"
"Would music lessons be appropriate for my family?"
"Is my child musical?"
"What if neither parent is 'musical'?"
"How young should you start?"
"How do you keep them practicing?"
"How do you find a teacher?"
"Won't they just do it in school?" 

What are your questions and aspirations? Yvette Odell will lead a discussion on this topic, adding her own experience, passion, perspective and inspiration, including many other benefits of music education for your family.

And NOW Here's the info on Claire's recital: 

7pm Tuesday, July 26th, 2011

Basilica of Saint Lawrence

97 Haywood St.

Asheville, North Carolina 28801

Love Notes for Haiti

A violin recital presented by Claire Gerhardt

Claire Gerhardt is a violinist studying performance and music education at Lawrence University. She is inspired to present this concert of classical music to prepare herself to volunteer at the Ecole Musique Dessaix-Baptiste, a music school in Jacmel, Haiti, for their summer camp. Claire will be working with young students learning to play orchestral instruments.

The recital will include works by Bach, Paganini, Biber, and DeBeriot. Assisting her will be Daniel Pinelli, violin, and Anne Gerhardt, cello. During the recital Claire will be sharing some interesting facts about the musical works, the acoustics in the beautiful basilica, and about the music schools in Haiti.

This recital is free and open to the public; donations are encouraged. Your donations will go towards her flight to Haiti, and any surplus will be used directly for music, instruments, and supplies for music students in Haiti.

 Hope to see many of you there! and don't forget if you want some ideas on how to take  young children to concerts read my blog post! "Taking your young children to live music events"

 Keep singing and twirling!
Yvette Odell
Singandtwirl@gmail.com

www.kindermusikwithyvette.com

Kindermusik in Asheville wins honors!

The families of Western North Carolina have voted on family friendly activities, restaurants, programs, and much more.  The Kindermusik educators of of Western North Carolina are humbly grateful to have been voted "BEST" in two different categories! Thanks to you we are recognized as WNC Parent's BEST PARENT/CHILD Program and BEST MUSIC Program! HOORAY!!!! THANK YOU, THANK YOU!!!

 

It really is the BEST thing to do with your little ones. You'll have a moment each week where it's all about the two of you. Delve into your relationship with your child. (Grandparents and dads you are welcome to be here. It's not just "Mommy and Me". This is great for you too.) You will see your child's thirst for musical fun, curiosity in full swing, creativity in movement and sound.

I am so happy that we are recognized as BEST MUSIC Program as I feel so passionately about the power of music to make a difference in the child's cognitive development---and social, emotional, physical development, as well as their musical development. I'm so pleased with the new set of Kindermusik graduates who are stepping into the world of music lessons with a huge advantage of being literate in music reading, listening skills that are turned on, an understanding of music such that they can listen to a piece of music and tell you if the beats are organized in groups of 3s or 4s. Most 7 and 8 year olds would not know what you are talking about if you asked them about meter in music.

If you are interested in registering for the 5-7+yo class with Yvette then send me an email or check out the website. This class was packed full last fall and most likely will be again this year.

AND!!! The summer classes (begins July 8th) still have room (nearly full!) so it's time to try out the shorter summer sessions!

Carnival of the Animals - Aviary

We listened today with my Kindermusik Young Child 1 class to the Aviary from Camile Saint-Saens' Carnival of the Animals. I mentioned that when you are listening with intent to this piece you might hear the flute and maybe the piano at first. When we listened again we heard more and more layers of sound. This complex listening gets kids ready for paying attention at school and for being extra observant to auditory input.

So here you can listen again and see for yourself! Do you hear the pizzicato cellos? And do you hear the wispy sound of the violins? I mentioned that there were 2 pianos and of course the star of the Aviary is the flute! (My favorite!)

the Aviary by Camile Saint-Saens

We listened today with my Kindermusik Young Child 1 class to the Aviary from Camile Saint-Saens' Carnival of the Animals. I mentioned that when you are listening with intent to this piece you might hear the flute and maybe the piano at first. When we listened again we heard more and more layers of sound. This complex listening gets kids ready for paying attention at school and for being extra observant to auditory input.

So here you can listen again and see for yourself! Do you hear the pizzicato cellos? And do you hear the wispy sound of the violins? I mentioned that there were 2 pianos and of course the star of the Aviary is the flute! (My favorite!)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFFt_kFq_eQ

Conscious listening.

Every Kindermusik day I help children and adults with conscious listening skills. Today in our Village class (newborn to 18months) we modeled wonder and attentiveness when listening to something specific. Our faces held wonder and our bodies were still as we listened. The babies right away were curious! They "froze" wide-eyed. After hearing the recording of the squirrel, bee, and owl we then mimicked the sounds vocally. If we continue to do this then the children will imitate us both with acute listening skills and with vocal play. It's a big job to help our brains to know exactly what to listen to and what to filter out......listen to this informative (5 minute) talk about listening:

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

Ready for school:

Camilla counts the ringing steeple bell.

Have you noticed when children first know how to count to ten (oh, we are so proud!) they know really only the poetry of
one
two
three
four
five
six
seven
eight
nine
ten!

You can tell this for sure if they point to their fingers while counting and assign 2 or more numbers per finger and skip some fingers to land on the last finger with the right number. They are missing the one-to-one ratio. So we are practicing just that right now by putting up one finger every time we sing the word EAT: I like to eat, eat, eat apples and bananas!

And how about counting with our ears? With this we are refining our listening skills. Listening is different from hearing--we hear it all and choose what to really listen to. So this week we count things we can hear like microwave beeps, telephone rings, footsteps....what will you listen to?

In music we are always counting. Eventually these young musicians will count with their ears and by feeling the patters of beats. I think this is a very special skill. We are not saying 1,2,3,4 for every measure of a concerto! (some tough measures, yes....) Someday do you think the researchers will recognize that sensing the beats and the numbers is what develops our brains in special intelligent ways? I have a hunch!

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.

Your child's school readiness program:

Kindermusik offers children many ways to work on school readiness skills. Today we did this little poem:

Tall as a tree.
Wide as a house.
Thin as a pin and
Small as a mouse.

Our fun movements are experiential and hook the movement, words and concepts together to result in LEARNING!! We are also working on the right side of the brain with words that trigger a child to think in pictures and understand the concepts and the greater understanding of metaphors! In our society where much of "education" proper is linear we are bridging a gap that may give them the creative edge in the job market!!! Hey, I'm always thinking ahead.

Here's a TV spot with my friend Melinda (up in Michigan) and her Kindermusik studio. (click the TV)

Do tell your friends...let's include them in on the fun. Invite them to come visit your Kindermusik class this week.
Have fun being tall as a tree!
Yvette