Don't let the sweet face fool you: He's a pirate

Pictured here is the always camera-ready Xander, and while I've strayed from the habit of posting "Xander's Kwips" lately, I'm linking you to Xander's latest video shoot.

Watch this. Especially the alternating rhythm with swinging the sword and slapping the knee. Who needs rum when you have rhythm like this?

We've used several of Xander's Dad's photos for Kindermusik marketing materials (especially with Mom Darcie being a Kindermusik Educator, too). Being the cost-savvy folks we are here at Kindermusik, I've paid her in Do-Re-Me & You! product for the pictures. She sent this video as a thank you.

Special note: Have you seen a camera like the one used in the above picture? A friend just bought one in Brooklyn, and apparently it takes four pictures at one time.

Respect the Van

When hands cry

If you're teaching Sign & Sing, you've felt the chills as parents watch their children say what they need before they ever say their first word. Kindermusik Educator Tracey Kretzer captured that moment on tape, and uploaded it to her new You Tube account.

Tracey sent me this email:

"I attended your blogger break out session at convention last fall. I learned a lot; thank you! I finally uploaded my first email to YouTube and thought I’d share it with you. I hope to get a blog together soon!

My now 12 month old Sign & Sing daughter started signing CRY instead of crying!She does this in a 5 word sentence! She actually started signing in 3 word sentences at 6 months old.

If pictures say 1,000 words; videos say a million; and this little one leaves me speechless.

Appearing now in the Teacher's Lounge

Flyers in Word format.
Black and white and e-postcards and graphics.
Customizeable graphics in Your Virtuoso.
Just add summer.

"Summer of Music" marketing tools now online in the Teacher's Lounge.

Pall Bearers Handle

Video camera in hand, Sean swirled around and taped one song from each of the acts at Greensboro's annual St. Patrick's Day celebration at M'Couls Public House. Then he'd duck inside and post the videos to his blog.

He asked which song I'd like to be taped, and I said the first song: Pall Bearer's Handle.

I wrote this song about the Limbo contest my family usually kicks up every St. Patty's Day. My brothers and I circle the pub and gather up the folks, saying "It's tradition here to participate in the annual limbo contest. There's a chance you can win $50."

As folks line up, my Dad passes over the "staff," which is really a pall bearer's handle. A friend of his gave it to him years ago, and over the years, Irishmen and women have signed the staff and it more resembles a happy shepard's crook.

When the bagpipes rise up and people start bending backwards, I've always been mesmerized by the idea that people are literally dancing under a death stick.

The real kicker however comes at the end of the contest, when the winner comes to claim his prize, and my father says: "There was a chance you could win $50. Chances are you won't."

Ah. The Irish.

Coming soon ....

Look in the Teacher's Lounge Friday for full-color and black and white flyers and postcards

you can use to promote your summer camps.

Three more days

On Saint Patrick's Day I always try to be in the middle of my favorite Irishmen.

Left to right: My Dad, big brother Danny, and (not so little anymore) brother Ryan. Sadly, we'll likely be in different places this year. Ryan will be in Western North Carolina, playing host to his soon-to-be-in-law family in Charlotte. Danny is hosting his in-laws in Raleigh, on the Eastern side of North Carolina. And I am still in the middle, smack dab in the middle of the state in Greensboro, NC.

I wouldn't be surprised if they showed up, though, unannounced. Especially since this year, for the first time, my Dad won't need to shush the crowd, or lift me onto the bar or a stage to sing. I've actually been offered one this year.

The Sound of Music

Personally, I love the writer's lyrical touch. Mom and professional fiddler Rani Arbo writes in this month's Wondertime magazine about her experience in Kindermusik and Music Together classes.

You can read the article online.

Hat tip, Memorable Moments.

Have you hugged your music today?

A few years ago at the Kindermusik Educator Convention in San Antonio, TX, Carla Hannaford talked about the absence of touch in many early childhood care environments. That generally means young children will go through their day and be reprimanded for touching, holding hands, hugging, and in general, being given the freedom to wrestle, and topple over each other, which is essential for spatial awareness and strengthening neural wires in the brain.

These adaptions to your stop and go activities, and stop and go dances in your baby classes, can make a big difference in a child's life today: Toddlers Express Themselves through Dance.

Musical Hugs
This game also promotes listening skills, discrimination between sound and silence and practice with stopping and starting. It has the added bonus of positive physical contact, which strengthens the bond between you and your toddler. To participate, both of you move in any way you want while the music is playing. When it stops (again, you press the pause button), you go to each other and hug. Start the music again, and repeat!

If you have multiple family members playing, participants hug whoever is closest to them when the music stops. If you're having a birthday party with several children in attendance, play this game instead of Musical Chairs, which eliminates players and means less movement for all but one child and results in one winner and many "losers."

Musical Partners
A variation on the above game, this requires players to find each other, hold hands and sit down until the music starts again! If you have several players, the game also can be played in two circles, one inside the other (one partner in the inside circle and one in the outside). When the music starts, the circles move in opposite directions. When it stops, the children run to their partners, hold hands and sit down.

A new look for zero to three

www.zerotothree.org is a great, quick, online resource for early childhood development. Even if you only have a few minutes before class, you can click through and brush up on your child development with this online archive of links to new and proven research, advocate support, and more.

Oh, dear. Did the Beatles sing a Sol-Mi?

Regarding the whole "Sol-Mi" interval. Love it. And we know that the simple melody in "Rain, Rain, Go Away," and "Starlight, Starbright" are the easiest for little ones to hear and eventually sing on their own. And just like the estranged, singing nun once said, "We'll start at the very beginning."

But as I was doing research on songs in this interval, I came across another interval, which leaves me wondering if we can create a better, and forgive the term, hipper list, of "Sol-mi" songs.

Dol-mi-Sol
• The Flintstones theme
• It Don’t Mean a Thing if it Ain’t Got That Swing
• The Star Wars Theme

Compared to using "Star Wars" as an example, "Starlight, Starbright" just seems a little dull.

So I need your help. Know any songs that feature the Sol-Mi interval? Maybe a Beatles melody, something to really help a new parent say, "a-ha!" I get it!

Comment here, or drop me a note.

Hello Laura!

I love Googling Kindermusik and coming across a blog I haven't seen before, like this one, especially a Kansas girl, like myself (I was born in Dodge City):

Laura's Kindermusik studio

"I taught elementary music for several years in Grain Valley, MO and Olathe, KS. I became interested in becoming a Kindermusik educator when I began to realize the value of developing the whole child, and being 'process oriented' instead of 'performance oriented.' I love watching the joy the children get from simply trying something new in class and feeling that sense of accomplishment. I now enjoy teaching Kindermusik, piano, flute, and voice lessons, and spending time with my husband and son, Reece."

Awwww. Shamrocks.

Even though I stopped celebrating St. Patrick's Day with green beer a long time ago (I'm one of the lucky Irish who can't hold a drink) it's still my favorite holiday.

It was a guaranteed day out of school; a march in the local parade; my Dad standing me on the bar or any stage and shusshing everybody to hear me sing; and looking for shamrocks and leprechauns.

How lucky is the little one who gets to wear these?

Imagine these guys at 7 years old: in your class

John Frusciante (upside down, on the right) was recently named one of the top 20 guitarists in the world in a recent issue of Rolling Stone. Quick aside: I’m no feminist but there were no chicks on the list. I do see this as an opportunity.

Ahem.

The magazine also links to a video of the Red Hot Chili Peppers' guitarist talking with the other top three cover players about their early experiences with music. At 7 years old Frusciante says he quit playing guitar because someone wouldn’t teach him what he wanted to know, and that his parents refused to buy him an electric guitar. He later found a way.

What’s that old saying about the better way to learn? The child who walks the beach and finds a fish on the shore and wonders what’s inside, or the child given a fish in a biology class who is forced to see what’s inside.


Let the electric guitars wash ashore.

The importance of rhythm

"The fetus normally learns rhythm and vibration through a mother's heartbeat and breathing as well as from the constant electrical impulses and EMFs (electromagnetic fields) being given off by these organs. ... Babies born without this sense of internal rhythm cannot calm themselves with self-generated rocking, crooning or sucking.

Instead, they just fret."

pg. 149 "Smart Moves, Why Learning is Not All In Your Head" by Carla Hannaford.

Recognize this little girl?

How about now?

Darcie Brown took both pictures, the first one snapped in Village class, and the second, the following year in Our Time.

We love those age-appropriate instruments!

Three. It's a magic number.

Kindermusik Educator and blogger Jeanne Lippincott is back online after a short hiatus, adjusting to life with a new baby, bringing her personal total up to three beautiful children.

We've missed you, and it's good to have you back.

The toddler dance

There is no greater feat on Vimeo

It goes like this: you dance, dance, dance, bounce in place, then bend halfway ... hang there ... then run to your mom.

Last night Marketing Director Lisa Rowell played a few tracks off the CD for Emmy, and she danced, while we watch.

All done

Sent off the finished album for the RPM songwriter's challenge just two hours ahead of deadline. It should arrive today. Still, it was a great exercise, and you can check out some of tunes on my Music MySpace page.

Baby on her lap, she wrote and wrote

"With the coming of the babies," wrote Laura Richards, a Pulitzer Prize winner and author of "Beauty and the Beast," and endless children's rhymes and poems. "I wrote, and sang, and wrote, and could not stop. The first baby was plump and placid, with a broad, smooth back which made an excellent writing desk. She lay on her front, across my lap; I wrote on her back, the writing pad quite as steady as the writing of jingles required."

Laura's poem Eletelphony is featured in "I Need a Kazoot."