April – Drums, Drums, Drums
This month your child will experience the concept of fractions through hearing and playing quarter and eighth notes. In class we’ll do “call and response” activities to the rhythmic sounds of African music. Meanwhile, your child will sharpen listening and attention skills, as well as fine tune her ear to finding patterns. Play the activities in your Home Kit together, and you’ll help your preschooler develop a strong foundation in math, rhythm and coordination, and critical listening.
Home Kit: Home CD and magazine-style Family Guide (includes the class story Drum Circle)

This month, we’re taking pretend adventures to the mountains, the beach, and going on bike rides, and picnics. Meanwhile, your toddler gets lots of practice taking turns and interacting socially. And you’ll love the take-home activities in your Home Kit, with great ideas for making an easy-at-home bird feeder. Plus, when you incorporate these class activities into your playtime at home, you’re sharing in the learning happening in class.
Home Kit: Home CD and magazine-style Family Guide (includes the class story Let’s Go Froggy)

Outside My Window (Laugh & Learn)

You and your child will enjoy a range of imagination and listening skills in Outside My Window. This month’s unit has the learning focus: “I hear and I listen. I can be loud or quiet.” The take-home magazine-style Family Guide provides an activity idea using Track 7 on the Home CD which features different rain sounds. Listen at home and find empty cans, uncooked rice, cardboard boxes, or uncooked pasta to imitate those sounds. In a child’s visual world, this exercise helps bring focus to the attention required for listening.
Home Kit: Home CD, and magazine-style Family Guide (includes the class story Rain Song)

Rhythms of the Land (Moovin & Grooving 4-6)

In class we’ll explore the rhythms and sounds of Native American music. As we investigate, compare, and contrast a wide variety of drums and the materials they’re made from, your preschooler develops the investigative vocabulary needed in the sciences. When you repeat rhythm patterns at home and share the activities in your Home Kit, your child gets an early start in math, too.
Home Kit: Wrist Bells instrument, Home CD, and magazine-style Family Guide (includes the class story Pedal Pump, Pedal Pump)

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Around the Farm

In class, your child’s memory and sequence skills will strengthen with stop-and-go games tucked into stories and pretend play about animals on a farm. You’ll find these stories and songs in your Home Kit, too. So when you play this month’s featured rhythm stick instruments along with the recordings, you help your child develop rhythm, coordination, and the confidence that comes with learning and playing along with you.
Home Kit: Pair of Rhythm Sticks, Home CD, and magazine-style Family Guide (includes the class story Cows in the Kitchen)
There are still a few openings left - Enroll today!

All Keyed Up

A piano and the well-known composer, J.S. Bach, help your preschooler get ready for school this month. The answer is right at the tip of your fingers. The same fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination your preschooler needs to hold a pencil—are developed through the special keyboard-playing activities we’ll be playing in class.
Home Kit: Pair of castanets instrument, Home CD, and magazine-style Family Guide (includes the class story Coppertop and the Four Keyboards)
Openings available - Enroll today!

Laugh & Learn (2-4)

September Class: Silly All Over

Silly All Over encourages children to experiment with rhythms, pitches, and silly sounds.
Learning Focus: My sense of humor is developing. I can listen and follow directions.

Steady Beat: Play instruments to music and move to a steady beat in a variety of activities, games and songs.

Inhibitory Control: Walk, jump, wiggle, and then STOP. Taking turns while playing instruments also helps practice control.
Locomotor Movement: Move from one place to another happens during each lesson—march, tiptoe, stomp, glide, and gallop.
Rhyming: Hear, anticipate, and predict rhyming words and phrases in stories and poems.

Moovin & Groovin 4-6

September Class – Jumping Beans
In class, your child’s memory and sequence skills will strengthen with stop-and-go activities—all set to the music of Latin America. Tucked into stories and pretend play activities, stop-and-go games help your preschooler control body motions and follow directions on the go. Share the stories, activities, and trivia in your Home Kit and you’ll strengthen self-discipline skills at home, too.
Home Kit: Pan Flute Instrument, Home CD, and Magazine-style Family Guide (includes the class story A Quieter Instrument).

Jazz Kitchen (4-6 years)

Get an extra helping of learning to share—with some jazz music in the mix. In your Home Kit, read about the little sheep who, along with her friends, whips up a batch of Noodles from Scratch. In class, your preschooler will use this story and other activities to learn to observe and accept others’ ideas, how to be a leader and a follower, as well as how to watch, listen, and speak to friends and teachers.
Home Kit: Home CD and magazine-style Family Guide (includes class story Noodles from Scratch)

MARVELOUS ME 18 months - 4years

This month we’ll cover pattern games and body awareness from head to toe. In class we’ll listen for patterns and repeated phrases in the music, which develops your child’s early math skills and self-esteem. When you play the same pattern seeking games at home that we played in class, your toddler’s confidence and skill building will grow. Home Kit: Home CD and magazine-style Family Guide (includes the class story Eyes, Nose, Fingers and Toes

March 26th

This week in ABC MUSIC & ME we pretended to fly a kite! The Developmental Benefits are Incorporating imagination and developing gross- motor skills. This activity encourages creativity in children.
We used Ziz Zag blocks to develop a steady beat during instrument play with the Song De Colores. Learning Steady beat will be a key factor in learning to walk, use scissors, and even dribble a basketball.

Take the fun home with you!“I Like to Sing” (CD Track 4) is a great locomotor activity. Try all the verses: sing, trot, swoop, and twist—then try jumping, twirling, swinging, swaying, stomping, romping, rolling, and giggling when the sun is shining! For an extra challenge, have your young child help you make up new verses—not only with new movements, but using different scenarios, such as “I like to hop when the rain is falling” or “I like to tiptoe when the dog is barking.”

Young children are always being asked questions— from “What color is this?”
to “What did you do in music class today?” Most of the questions have simple
and definitive answers. Try opening your questions up for more creative answers—Ask “What do you like to do when the sun is shining?” or “How should we move next?” Be prepared to follow your child’s lead, and you may be surprised at how creative he can be!

While locomotor milestones (balancing, sitting, crawling, and walking) develop most rapidly in the first two years of life, the development of locomotor skills never actually stops. From manual tasks that require fine motor coordination to learning how to play a new sport, we are constantly faced with new tasks that require new locomotor abilities.

Lesson 1 Up In the Sky

We welcomed 2 new students & their mommies this week.
Today's activities:

* ABC Music & Me Hello—Greeting Ritual ~ Today we waved tapped and were "flying" hello to our friends. This Ritual helps to develop singing skills and develop social skills. This is a song that we sing every week in class. This lets children know that we are begining our lesson and gets them "ready" Children enjoy repetition which is evident in how many times they like to hear the same story or song...
* Mr. Sun—Song and Finger Play This song also helps to develop singing skills as well as Developing those fine motor skills, which are necessary for scissor control, and holding a writing instrument.

* I like to Sing - Locomotor Movement ~ children need opportunities to develop these skills. Research shows that children that participate in activities such as the ones in today's class will help with balance, coordination, and timing which will help later on when learning how to ride a bike, dancing or playing sports.

- Sunshine Play—Instrument Play-Along
_ Robin Story—Expressive Movement
_ Robin Sounds—Focused Listening
_ Little Robin—Rhyme and Finger Play
_ Mister Robin—Song with Echoed Response
_ Someone Bigger—Storytime
_ My Kite—Expressive Movement with a Prop
_ The Color Song—Movement with a Prop
_ De Colores—Instrument Play-Along
_ Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star—Song and
Finger Play
_ ABC Music & Me Goodbye
—Goodbye Ritual


Take the fun home with you!
Play CD Track 2 and try this simple finger play with your young child. Watch how rapt she becomes when listening, watching, and moving all at once. When you’re ready, try it on your own without the CD.

Activities that integrate a young child’s senses are an extraordinary way to get—and keep—a young child’s attention. They provide a multiplicity of learning benefits, including exercising listening skills, enhancing vocabulary development, and building and refining motor skills.

March – Up In the Sky

In your Home Kit read the story we’re sharing in class called Someone Bigger, about a boy who wants to take over the reins of the family kite. Then grab a scarf or handkerchief and imitate the up and down crouching, reaching, and running associated with flying a kite—just like the boy in our story. Your Family Guide magazine includes activities you can easily incorporate into your day to reinforce our counting and color-learning activities in class.
Home Kit: Three-bell jingle instrument, Home CD, and magazine-style Family Guide (includes the class story Someone Bigger)

March – Dance With Me

This month, we’ll feature the music and dance of “one-two” rhythms and “one-two-three” rhythms. In class, we’ll hear real instruments from the ballet and learn a few dance steps, too. Activities like dance, where your child follows a short sequence of instructions, helps to strengthen memory and his ability to follow directions. At home, play the CD in your Home Kit and let your preschooler show you a new step or two. Home Kit: Pair of lumi stix, Home CD, and magazine-style Family Guide (includes the class story Dance of Our Own)

Laugh & Learn ~ Ages 18 months to 3 February

The Home Sweet Home unit of ABC Music & Me uses everyday tasks around the house to explore the learning focus: "I can move High and low. I can make high and low sounds. I can pretend." Children will have fun rap-rap-rapping, pop-pop-popping. and splash-splash-splashing their way through a great big house in their great big imaginations!

Moovin & Groovin ages 4-7 ~ February

The Sounds Abound unit of ABC Music & Me is bursting with musical and storytelling sound effects! We'll use everyday objects such as plastic cups and aluminum pie pans, along with voices and a variety of musical instruments, to accompany stories and play along to music. Children will learn the term timbre and will explore the many different sound qualities at their fingertips and on the keyboard. We'll hum a familiar tune, walk through the jungle like an elephant, and sail away on an adventure in this unit's story, If I had a Big Blue Boat.