Music classes are based on the recognition that all children are musical. All children can learn to sing in tune, keep a beat, and participate with confidence in the music of our culture, provided that their early environment supports such learning. We believe that music education begins at birth and progresses in the same manner as language. In working with babies we see that they are alert to each new song, they can sense when a song comes to an end, they notice dynamics, they respond to tempo changes. Perhaps most dramatic is they can coo in tonality of a given song. Babies frequently respond to hearing their caregivers singing a song and shift their own habitual sounding pitch to meet the tone or another tone from the songs main chord-in effect synchronizing them to the singer.
All children are musical. This is the cornerstone of our philosophy. Children learn seemingly with no effort along the development path toward basic music competence in much the same way they learn language, apparently by absorbing it from the environment. Similar to the way a child moves from babble to a single word, and then to two word sentences, they move from music babble to musical expression of greater complexity. An early milestone is the ability to hear notes in relation to one another, therefore begin to produce two separate pitches.
Soon the child will be singing bits and pieces of songs accurately. Gradually, he would align himself more and more with accurate pitch. Like language, we call the different aspects of musical processing receptive and expressive and basic musical competence arises out of the inner feedback loop that gets established between the two systems.
We provide a musically rich environment that is so vital to music learning from infancy and beyond. Our environment will be rich with singing, movement, dance, and instruments especially designed for babies.
Humans have the capacity to develop remarkable mental storage systems. Establishing systems of memory and learning is an essential childhood task. The brains of children are in a sense doing double duty. At the same time that they are processing many types of information, categorizing them, and storing them into memory, they are busily forming the very neural structure that performs these tasks. Before the child develops the ability to sing in tune and move with accurate rhythm, it is difficult for him to store music memories adequately.
Like talking, music making (singing, dancing, playing instrument, and clapping) is a basic life skill, fundamental to our human mature and available to all, regardless of so-called talent.
Like talking, music learning requires the modeling of primary caregivers. By actively making music, regardless of their ability, the adults that love and care for children help them acquire the disposition to be music makers, too.
Like talking, the ability to speak the language and acquire a basic level of fluency to be understood, including signing in tune and moving with accurate rhythm, requires music learning through most of the early childhood years, from birth through kindergarten.
Like talking, basic fluency in music is a developmental prerequisite to formal instruction in reading, writing, and performing the language of music.
We are committed to being a community of music makers and provide a musically rich environment where your children will thrive musically.
