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| Music Classes at start at 3 months old! These classes are "Mommy and Me" format. Try music at Studio J!!   First Notes: 3 months to 18 months Expose your youngest children to music and instruments so that their brain will be programmed toward music at a young age. (See article below.) The class is led by a trained musician who plays piano and one or more other instruments. The teacher leads the infants and the grown up who brings them in songs, finger plays, dances and more. She introduces various instruments to the children by playing them so they hear how they sound and letting them touch the instruments as well. The parent participant helps their child hold the small sized percussion instruments. Parents are excited to see how quickly their little ones join in by grasping an instrument and shaking it or moving their body in perfect rhythm to a song the teacher is leading. Various styles of music are included in our time together. Tunes for Twos: 18 months to 36 months As your child gets older they are able to play more and more instruments because of their small muscle coordination. You will also notice that they are remembering the songs and fingerplays we sing and repeating them. They begin to enjoy dancing and moving to the music more and more. At this age we introduce them to the handbells as well as the keyboard. Puppets and various props are also used. The two year olds really enjoy drums as well. We actually make some instruments for them to use at home. We make one instrument per month as part of the curriculum. Making Music: 3 to 5 year olds The preschool age class includes singing and rhythm training through the use of drums and various percussion instruments. The teacher uses their instrument of choice be it guitar, harp or autoharp in leading the chidren in song and dance. The piano and keyboards are also used so that the children are exposed to them. (Suzuki piano is also available for preschool age children and there is a harp exploratory class for this age and a strings exploratory class for this age.) The making music class will move children toward a life that includes music. And at Studio J we believe that a life filled with music makes every day more enjoyable. (as well as helping you to learn. ) Children in this class will make one instrument per month as part of the curriculum Sibling Music Classes: 3 months to 5 years Many people like to bring their children at the same time to do an activity with them. The sibling music class combines elements of each of the top three classes. If the time works for you and you are only bringing one child that is also fine if they are in one of the age groups. Keep singing! (We also have one after school class on Wednesdays at 5:30 that you can bring your children up to age 8 to. This one is for children who are ages 3 months to 8 years. They will enjoy playing rhythms, singing, moving and more. We learn musical concepts such as forte, piano, allegro, largo, etc. The teacher will use familiar tunes, originals as well as current music that children know. This is a fun upbeat class.)
Please read this article on the benefits of teaching kids to make music:
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, April 8, 1997 -
Reprinted with permission
Mark Ward, Science Matters
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Anyone who's been around small children knows that a sure-fire way to capture their attention is with music.
Hum a song or plink out a tune on a piano or guitar and it's as if you switched on a magnet, as they gather around wanting to join in.
Children whose brains don't make those connections at an early age may never make them.
Now there's evidence that that response is not simply a pleasant distraction but an affinity wired into the brain from birth that could also help prepare children for some of the most complex learning they will ever do.
Those are some of the conclusions coming from the work of psychology Prof. Frances Rauscher at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh.
Rauscher and researchers at the University of California at Irvine made national news in February with a study finding that preschool children in Los Angeles who received music training with keyboards performed 34% higher on tests for spatial-temporal reasoning than children who were trained on computers or had no special training at all.
Spatial-temporal reasoning is what you use when you figure ratios or proportions or manipulate images of things in your mind. It's at the heart of all so-called higher-level brain functions that you use in playing chess or doing science, mathematics and other complex tasks.
Recently, Rauscher expanded on her findings at a pair of Wisconsin schools: Wales and Magee elementary schools in the Kettle Moraine School District. She found that kindergarten students at the two schools who took music lessons on piano keyboards scored 36% higher on tests of spatial-temporal reasoning than students who didn't have the lessons.
What's exciting about these latest results, she says, is they show that the improved learning effect that she documented in younger children is still present after they enter school.
Also -- something that will give heart to struggling school districts -- she found an effect with as little as 20 minutes of group piano instruction once a week over three to four months.
The details are still fuzzy, she says. No one is sure what amount of instruction is optimal, or what gains children get with other instruments, such as violins, recorders or drums. Rauscher herself is an accomplished cellist who started at age 5. But the improvements seem undeniably and, from all appearances, permanent.
Exactly how music enhances learning is not clear, but scientists believe that when children receive music instruction their brains form connections between neurons in patterns that also help them to do higher reasoning.
Children whose brains don't make those connections at an early age may never make them. That's because after a few years their brains stop making so many connections and start pruning unused neurons.
That's not to say children won't benefit from music instruction later in life. One study even found that college students improved their reasoning after listening to a Mozart sonata, but the effect lasted only 10 minutes.
Nor does the study suggest that music is the only way to make those connections. Children learn in many ways.
But there aren't very many ways to do such serious learning while having so much fun. At a minimum, Rauscher's findings make a strong case for integrating music into learning as early in life as possible. Who knows? That child stumbling her way through "The Jolly Farmer" may be the next generation's leading scientist.
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