 Last week my little family took a road trip to visit friends in Philadelphia. The Music Together® CD was on heavy rotation throughout our drive. During our visit, we spent the day at Longwood Gardens, which has an outdoor children’s garden with fountains, mazes and much to my surprise, an assortment of toddler-friendly percussion instruments. My son ran up to the chimes (a series of vertical metal tubes) and without any instruction from us, he picked up the mallet and began playing. I assume this is a direct result of our jam sessions during music class. Each session of Music Together® includes two wordless songs. In the first, egg shakers are passed out and both parents and kids are encouraged to shake along to the beat. During the second,an assortment of percussion instruments are dumped into the center of the circle and the children can choose from items such as bells, drums, triangles, castanets, or rhythm sticks. In addition to these interactive sessions in class, I have been creating our own mini jam sessions at home with pots and pans for drums and wooden and metal spoons for mallets. It was very rewarding to see these efforts pay off as I watched my son interact with the instruments at the park. When he grew tired of the chimes, he moved over to the large xylophone and alternated between banging on the wooden keys and pausing to bop up and down in his version of dancing.  During our third class this week class our teacher, Miss Alicia, reminded us that you can sing your sentences when talking to your child. I tried this out during our evening fussy time and not only did it become a great distraction tool, but my son responded by singing (he sang the word “no”) and matching my pitch (at least he was in key while being difficult)! My obvious excitement made him excited and we created a new getting-dressed-in-our-pajamas game. As I mentioned in last week’s blog, Music Together® has taught me how to incorporate music activities that are fun as well as developmentally appropriate into our daily routine. After three sessions I can definitely see a change in my son’s interest and response to music. Music Together® is a parent-child music class of mixed ages from birth to age five. Classes focus on interactive play where both the caregiver and child share songs, play instruments, and participate in rhythm chants and movement activities. Classes of mixed ages foster family-style learning where the younger children watch and imitate the older ones, and the older children learn by leading the younger ones. Meryl's Music and Arts Centers offer a variety of classes for children (from birth to age seven) at studios in Harwich, S. Yarmouth, Bourne, Eastham, and Sandwich. Disclaimer: This review was made possible by Meryl's Music & Arts. All thoughts are the blogger's own.
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 When sitting down to reflect upon the changes between our first and second Music Together® class, I realized that at this point there has been a bigger transformation in me than in my son. I don't necessarily think this is a bad thing. In fact, I think my increased mindfulness of music as a part of our everyday activity is the major point of the Music Together® philosophy. As a parent you are constantly aware of your child's development, encouraging them as they become more aware of their own body as well as their surroundings. We hold their hands and provide guidance as they learn to walk. We point to objects and help them sound out new words, repeating them endlessly to encourage language development. It makes sense that the same can be done with music. Not only have I have been playing the songs from class often, but I have made a conscious effort to incorporate more music into our routine. I find myself singing or humming while changing my son’s diaper or giving him a bath. Humming is a great way to diffuse frustration too (and I have my fair share of frustrating moments especially with a toddler who loves to “help” by upending the contents of whatever I have just finished cleaning up). Belting out one of his favorite songs also worked wonders as a distraction tool, successfully averting a meltdown. While the bigger change so far has been in my own musical awareness, there was a noticeable difference in my son's behavior between the first and second class. Gone was the cautious observer nestled securely in my lap. Instead he was an enthusiastic participant, playing with egg shakers during one song, exploring the variety of percussion instruments available for play during another, and zooming around the room with zeal when the colorful scarves made their appearance. I believe by playing the songs at home he has become familiar enough with them to feel secure in the studio, which is the necessary ingredient for learning to occur. What has impressed me most is that the class encourages each child to experience music through multiple senses. The songs covered in class and on the CD range from emphasizing tonal patterns (singing or humming a note at a precise pitch) to rhythm (tapping a precise pattern of beats). Instruments passed out during class encourage you to feel the music when you bang on the big drums or jangle the bells and to see the music when you dance and twirl with the scarves. As a parent I have already grown accustomed to acting silly in public for the benefit of my son. It has honestly been a lot of fun to become reacquainted with the uninhibited and musically expressive side of myself. Now that I am conscious of making playful music a part of our everyday routine I am interested to see how this will be reflected in my son throughout the remainder of the course. Music Together® is a parent-child music class of mixed ages from birth to age five. Classes focus on interactive play where both the caregiver and child share songs, play instruments, and participate in rhythm chants and movement activities. Classes of mixed ages foster family-style learning where the younger children watch and imitate the older ones, and the older children learn by leading the younger ones. Meryl's Music and Arts Centers offer a variety of classes for children (from birth to age seven) at studios in Harwich, S. Yarmouth, Bourne, Eastham, and Sandwich. Disclaimer: This review was made possible by Meryl's Music & Arts. All thoughts are the blogger's own.
 I did not expect to be thinking about John Denver and the Muppet's Christmas album in the middle of July. The heat is reason enough to conjure imaginary mountains of snow, but my thoughts drifted to one of my favorite childhood music memories after I took my son to our first Music Together® class at Meryl's Music. Wondering if there might be a reason why I specifically thought about Christmas carols from my childhood after the first class, I went to Google for some answers. It turns out that the part of our brain which follows the notes in a piece of music is the same part that stores memories. Even though the class did not involve any of the songs specifically from my favorite childhood album, there must have been enough similarities to bring that musical memory of mine back to the surface. This also explains why I can still (proudly) sing all the words to Milli Vanilli's Blame it on the Rain when I probably haven't heard the song in ten to fifteen years. Music is now being used as a therapy with Alzheimer patients as a way to recall important events and emotions. Some may argue that taking an infant or toddler to a music class is more for the caregiver in attendance than the child. Others will cite a growing body of research that suggests an early introduction to music is vital for a child's development. While listening to Mozart may not make your child the next Einstein, exposing your child to music has many positive benefits. When children interact with the music they hear, by singing and playing along, they not only develop an early sensitivity to pitch (such as recognizing when a note is off key) but research has demonstrated that musical interaction can lead to improved social and communication skills. I don't need exhaustive research studies to tell me this. Intuitively, I believe music is as important as language and that the two are often intertwined. I learned my ABC's by singing them and have a catalog of songs taught to me when I was a child, which bubbled back to the surface of my sleep-deprived brain after the birth of my son. Parents and caregivers have been singing lullabies to soothe their children far longer than any research studies or specially marketed baby genius CD's have been around. Music is a fundamental part of our culture and is one way in which we express our range of emotions. Music is everywhere. It is so completely integrated into our society that you often do not even realize you are hearing it (until you catch yourself humming or singing along). The car radio. The commercial jingle. The opening credits of a movie. You hear music at the grocery store, in elevators, at the dentist or the airport.  When I signed up for Music Together® I had a picture in my head of a group of children unencumbered by self consciousness responding to the music by dancing and singing. I wasn’t far off. The class was 45 minutes of playful fun and it was easy to see which children had been attending previous sessions. While my son remained a cautious observer during the majority of the class, the children who had taken classes before enthusiastically picked up instruments, tapped in time to the beat, and joyfully ran around our group interacting with each other and the music. You leave the first class armed with a beautifully illustrated songbook, a music CD that contains all the songs covered during the session, and an informational brochure containing a DVD. Determined to make the most of this class, I popped the CD into the car stereo and was pleasantly surprised. It is actually really fun to listen to and a few days after our first class I have already played it several times. The songs have a variety of tempos from slow and smooth, to lively Latin beats that my son already seems to show a preference for. A key aspect of this program is right in the title; music together. So in the spirit of full commitment I will be belting out the songs in the car as we bop around town on errands and have instituted a daily dance parade around the living room with improvised instruments. It is already quite obvious to me that my son mimics the actions of the people who love and care for him, so my level of involvement is important. The repetition of the music outside of class encourages him to recognize the songs and there is nothing better than watching your child express himself as he moves to the beat by bopping, clapping, swaying. The playfulness is infectious and we are having a great time. Perhaps when my son is grown, instead of having a head full of John Denver and Milli Vanilli, some of his musical memories will be songs he and I learned in Music Together. Music Together® is a parent-child music class of mixed ages from birth to age five. Classes focus on interactive play where both the caregiver and child share songs, play instruments, and participate in rhythm chants and movement activities. Classes of mixed ages foster family-style learning where the younger children watch and imitate the older ones, and the older children learn by leading the younger ones. Meryl's Music and Arts Centers offer a variety of classes for children (from birth to age seven) at studios in Harwich, S. Yarmouth, Bourne, Eastham, and Sandwich. Please visit www.merylsmusicandarts.com for more information. Disclaimer: This review was made possible by Meryl's Music & Arts. All thoughts are the blogger's own.
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