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  - Early Childhood Music
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Toddler/Multi-age
30 minutes with an adult
Class size: Minimum of 5 children

Participate with your toddler in singing, chanting, moving, dancing, listening, and playing simple instruments - while developing a strong musical bond with your child. Through activities that bridge the natural connection between music and movement, your child's musical aptitude and listening abilities are enhanced and further developed.

For ages 3.5 - 4.5 years old
30 minutes, last 10 minutes with an adult
Class size: Minimum of 5 children

Children this age love to explore their world through songs, creative movement, stories, instruments and their imagination. This curriculum is based on the seasons of the year while encouraging the young child's sense of wonder. Musical concepts are introduced in this 30-minute class where parents join us for the last 10 minutes. Parents are welcome to attend the entire session if it makes their children more comfortable, however please limit others’ presence. Home materials include a CD, songbook, and manipulatives, allowing the learning and fun to continue at home.

For ages 5 - 6 years old
45 minutes, last 10 minutes with an adult
Class size: Minimum of 5 children

In this class, children explore the music, dances and stories of different cultures. As always, the key ingredients are singing, listening, playing instruments, lots of movement, and tonal and rhythm patterns. Through echoing and playing patterns, the children will build a vocabulary of musical phrases which they can recognize aurally and visually, leading to an understanding of musical notation. Caregivers join in last ten minutes. Each unit's packet includes a CD, a map, song pages, and notation games.

For ages 0 - 12 months old (Lap babies, crawlers)
30 minutes with an adult
Class size: Minimum of 5 children

This is a music class for babies between the ages of 0 and 12 months and their parents. It is designed to nurture the musical bond between you and your child. You will play musically with your baby through bouncing and rocking songs, action and peek-a-boo games, dancing, moving, and singing. Music play activities are designed to increase your child's curiosity about music, to develop listening skills and a sense of beat, and to establish the foundation for singing and musical thought. You will come home from each class with songs and activities your child will love!

Many parents of young children enroll their child in music class. It is a fun way to spend time together, and since children are innately musical, it is an activity to which they are naturally drawn. But are you aware of all the benefits that music has to offer your child? Following is an excerpt of an article recently presented in Early Childhood Connections, a journal for early-childhood educators.

• Music is a language, and children instinctively recognize spoken language as communication.
• Music evokes movement, and children delight in and require movement for their development and growth.
• Music engages the brain while stimulating neural pathways associated with such higher forms of intelligence as abstract thinking, empathy, and mathematics.
• Music’s melodic and rhythmic patterns provide exercise for the brain and help develop memory. Who among us learned the ABCs without the ABC song?
• Music is an aural art and young children are aural learners. Since hearing is fully mature before birth, infants begin absorbing the sounds of their environment before birth.
• Music is perfectly designed for training children’s listening skills. Good listening skills and school achievement go hand in hand.
• Developmentally appropriate music activities involve the whole child – the child’s desire for language, the body’s urge to move, the brain’s attraction to patterns, the ear’s lead in initiating communication, the voice’s response to sounds, as well as the eye-hand coordination associated with playing musical instruments.
• Making music is a creative experience which involves expression of feelings. Children often do not have the words to express themselves and need positive ways to release their emotions.
• Music transmits culture and is an avenue by which beloved songs, rhymes, and dances can be passed down from one generation to the next.
• Music is a social activity which involves family and community participation. Children love to sing and dance at home, school, and at church.

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