I hope everyone has had a great first two weeks of the Bells collection! Remember to keep singing and moving with your kids at home. Remember, you are their most important music teacher.
Did you know that the parent/child program is not the only version of Music Together? The program is also available for use in a preschool setting, and we are fortunate to be able to provide Music Together as an outreach program for pre-kindergarten students at the Early Childhood Center in Sand Springs.
Many of you know Teresa Mossburg, who taught several of our classes at the Conservatory last year. She's now doing a wonderful job of teaching MT in Sand Springs.
There's a nice article in today's paper about the program. Click here to access it. (And feel free to leave positive comments in the space below the article if you are so inclined!) If you have any questions at all about it, please let me know. There are a few differences between the parent/child and the pre-k programs, but the basic goal is the same: to help kids reach basic music competence in a fun, age-appropriate fashion.
Have a great week!
Christy
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HI, Christy and other MT fans! I thought you'd be interested to see this article. see ya in class.
Parents' use of gestures may improve children's vocabulary
By Neelam Goswami
Published on February 13, 2009
New York, February 13: Use lots of hand gestures to communicate with your child - U.S. researchers have discovered this simple and effective method that they claim would develop toddler’s vocabulary in later life.
Vocabulary and spelling are the most important part of a child’s education. People use different methods to build their children’s vocabulary.
According to a new study from University of Chicago psychologists, parents who demonstrate a broad range of gestures to their children at 14 months of age produce children with richer vocabulary.
In their research, Meredith Rowe, of the University of Chicago, and her colleague Susan Goldin-Meadow found that those tots who used gestures more often to convey meanings at 14 months had larger and more complex vocabularies when they prepared to start school.
“If there is any way to encourage children to gesture to things more before they can speak, that could be useful,” Rowe said. “Talk to your children more, gesture more.”
Rowe and Susan also found that children from higher socioeconomic families started school with stronger vocabulary skills, while children of low socioeconomic backgrounds entered school with start school with smaller vocabularies.
To reach their findings, the researchers visited the homes of 50 Chicago-area families of varying socioeconomic backgrounds who had 14-month-old kids. They recorded video of children with their parent for 90-minute sessions, to know how often both children and their parents spoke and used gestures.
After measuring the number of "gesture types" such as pointing, waving or nodding, Rowe and Susan found that 14-month-old toddlers from high-income, well-educated families used gesture to convey an average of 24 different meanings during the 90-minute videotaped session, while tots from lower-income families conveyed only 13.
The researchers then assessed all the children again at the age of 54 months (four and a half), when they were starting school and discovered that those who had gestured more at the age of 14 months had significantly richer vocabularies.
"Gesture and speech go hand-in-hand,” said Susan. "Vocabulary is a key predictor of school success and is a primary reason why children from low-income families enter school at a greater risk of failure than their peers from advantaged families."
“At 14 months of age, children are in the very early stages of productive language, they are saying very few words,” Rowe added. “We didn’t see any differences in their spoken language but we did see difference in their gestures.
“It is striking that, in the initial stages of language learning when social economic status differences in children’s spoken vocabulary are not yet evident, we see social economic status differences in child gesture use.”
Parents and teachers could help children develop their speech by encouraging the use of gestures, conclude the University of Chicago psychologists.
Thanks for passing along the article, Erica! Very interesting. Isn't it amazing what our children our capable of learning at such a young age?
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