Keeping a Steady Beat

You’re at a concert and the ensemble is playing some lively music. Without thinking about it, you start tapping your toes. Or you’re baking meringues and you carefully separate the egg whites into a bowl, then beat them rapidly with a whisk. You are building a birdhouse with your child and you pick up a hammer to nail one board securely to another. All these activities are examples of ways we use our ability to keep a steady beat.

A child is born with an internal sense of steady beat that is innate and unique to them. You might see a baby kicking her feet or waving his hands rhythmically and it’s connected to what they feel on the inside. The learning for steady beat comes when we learn to coordinate our movements – like playing a pair of sticks or dancing to music – to an outside source of beat. Steady beat requires careful listening as well as flexibility and adaptability to connect the sound we make as individuals to a larger group of people playing or singing music. In order to keep a steady beat, we also need the ability to organize and coordinate our bodies so we can control our movements. Socially, we need both the ability and the desire to connect ourselves to a larger community, like a band or orchestra – or a group of children.

For children, especially, learning to keep a steady beat helps them with larger physical movement like walking, riding a bike, and bouncing or kicking a ball as well as using tools such as scissors, a hammer, or a whisk. Listen to the music you’re making the next time you type on a computer keyboard! Learning steady beat also helps with cognitive abilities such as speaking, writing, reading, and evening doing math.

In Kindermusik classes, we take seriously the importance of learning to keep a steady beat. And we also know learning comes so much easier if you’re having fun! The variety of scarves, shakers, clackers, bells, and drums we keep in bins on our shelves, as well as the dances, chants, poetry, and songs in our repertoire are all part of the rich palette we use to help children learn to keep a steady beat.

We help babies feel the beat by holding them while we dance, tapping on their legs or arms, rocking them during rocking time. We help the toddlers learn to play the beat by playing instruments, encouraging them to dance and move, and by modeling steady beat for them as they explore their own ways of playing and moving. We help the preschoolers expand beat into rhythm using their own creativity. We give the school-age kids mastery by teaching them to read and write the beat using notation.

Playing along with a jingle bell to a song with a class of children can seem simple – but really it is just a step on a lifelong path of musical growth and unfolding.

Seeing the Everyday

'Our lives are the sum

of each moment and interaction.

Each day we work, eat, laugh, teach, play, read, remember...

And work at it all again the next day.

Within seemingly small moments we find opportunity

To build relationships, develop character, find joy

For the price of our time.

Life's most essential possibilities are realized at home.

Where we share, teach, grow, learn, serve, give

Our best without praise or fanfare.

Because every effort, every moment matters

In the development of a person.

Nothing is really routine.'

 

Want to learn more about your child’s musical development? Read on….

 

How does Kindermusik class help to develop my child’s musical skills? 

Below we’ve outlined the musical profile of a 3-5 year old child and included ways that we practice these skills in Kindermusik class each week.

• We are developing beat awareness.  We practice beat awareness using our talking drum where we walk, run, and jumpto the beat of the drum
• We match beat to external sound source in non-locomotor ways.  We practice matching beat when we explore sticks and other instruments, then play along to songs on our Home CD, such as “This Old Man”
• We enjoy the interactive nature of circle games.  Recently we played “What Shall We Do?” where children took turns sharing their ideas for playing outside and then we “sang” their ideas as a group in the song.
• We are becoming increasingly successful with the rhythmic and tonal components of songs.  The Grasshopper Park Story has been a great tool for exploring rhythm and tone. We can already see improvement in the children’s ability to retell the story using rhythm and tonal components, which means that they’ve been telling the story at home!
• We are beginning to sing accurately in a limited range.  With each class the children are singing more on pitch. That’s one reason we repeat songs from week to week is to give the children practice at matching pitch.
• We can differentiate between the singing voice and the speaking voice.  We incorporate both chants and songs in class to practice differentiating between speech and singing.
• We are beginning to understand musical concepts such as: Loud/Quiet, High/Low, Long/Short, Fast/Slow. The ball play song, Do as I’m Doing, lends itself well to explore these concepts. Plus our glissando exploration has given us an opportunity to practice high/low voices.

It's age-appropriate.

It's musical learning.

It's music for now. Skills for life.