Happy Holidays from the Team at Grow and Sing Studios!
Thank you for making music with us this year at Kindermusik, Piano Lessons, Parties, Playdates and Music for Aardvarks.
Here’s to a great 2014!

Thank you to all who voted for us! We WON!
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Hello Friends,

To us, every day should be a “giving” day, and we strive for that throughout the year. However, we think it’s wonderful that today, the day after Black Friday, Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday that we focus on how we can help others. So, we wanted to let you know what Grow and Sing Studios is doing to contribute.

TOYS FOR TOTS
In November, we started our Toys for Tots campaign. This is our final week to collect toys, and we can proudly say that we have already OVERFILLED our box! We are SO excited to turn in our full box of toys to the Marines this weekend.

KINDERMUSIK SCHOLARSHIPS
Each semester, we make available a certain number of Kindermusik scholarships for families in need. We want everyone who WANTS to benefit from the Kindermusik experience to attend, and we do our best to make this a reality. Grow and Sing Studios offers a number of scholarships per year to Arnold Palmer Hospital’s Pediatric Cardiac patients, as well as Pediatric Cancer Patients. We know medical bills are high, and we are thrilled we can bring some joy during a tough time. These scholarships cover tuition and materials so that families can just come and enjoy the experience. Most recently, we have made available scholarships to Autism Speaks and are excited to meet the families these scholarships have been awarded to.

GIVING TUESDAY SCHOLARSHIP OFFER
We would like to offer a scholarship today to a family who perhaps can’t attend right now for financial reasons, or due to medical costs are not able to attend. We want this family who is awarded this scholarship to be available to attend on a weekly basis and this offer is through May 2014. If you or a friend would like to apply to receive this gift, please CLICK HERE to fill out our easy application. At this time, we can only award one scholarship, but this may change in the near future, so we’ll keep all applications in our file and contact you if you are awarded! Applications need to be in by Friday, December 6th at 5pm. All applications will be reviewed and considered and the recipient will be notified soon. We will not announce recipient publicly. This information stays confidential. Thank you.

Have a wonderful Giving Tuesday and Happy Holidays!

The next time Thanksgiving and Hanukkah happen at the same time is in 79,000 years, so we’ll say this is a special occasion!! Wishing all who celebrate Hanukkah a wonderful week, and to all our friends, a very Happy Thanksgiving.

So, first we would like to say….

and then…. to all

A note from your owner/directors, Holly and Will.

We would like to address some questions that are always asked at this time a year, regarding the inevitable cold and flu season. Our class guidelines state to not attend class if you or your child is sick. A good guideline to follow is to be fever free for 24 hours, and for a nose not to be running with anything other than clear. It is VERY common for babies and toddlers to have runny noses due to teething. It is VERY hard to distinguish that from being sick. If you at all feel that your child is under the weather, remain home and schedule a makeup class by emailing .

We wanted to let everyone know our studio wide procedures for attempting to keep our classrooms as sanitized as possible. While it is impossible to guarantee you that our instruments and props are 100% sanitized, we do our best to minimize sickness. We spray instruments, etc. with Clorox Anywhere, and tumble dry all fabric items in the dryer. After doing much research, Clorox Anywhere seems to be the safest product to use for our purposes. Here is a link to read more about the product. 

Written and Contributed by Will Lesnick

Checking my email In-Box, I just received my 1 year license renewal notice from Simply Music.  Wow, time flies!  It was a year ago that I became licensed as a Simply Music Piano Lessons educator, and what a year it’s been. It was about 16 months ago that my wife Holly (founder and director of Grow and Sing Studios) and I restructured our business lives to rotate almost exclusively around Grow and Sing Studios which until then had only offered Kindermusik programming for children up to age 7, all around Central Florida.  I had slowly been becoming more and more involved, but it was last year we decided to make it official and put everything we both had into this being our primary family business. The next step was to figure out my roll, beyond being the “behind the scenes guy”.

Although for the first seven years I had little actual involvement in Grow and Sing Studios, I too have a musical background.  I took piano lessons from the age of 5, and went on to play saxophone and clarinet in bands from Junior High through college, as well as community bands after my school years.  We had heard from other Kindermusik educator friends around the country about a revolutionary program out there for teaching piano called Simply Music that many of them were introducing into their studios.  I decided to look into what Simply Music was all about.

I will admit, when I first started investigating I was a little skeptical about this supposed method of playing piano where students as young as 5 are learning how to play a wide variety of great songs on the piano with both hands in such a short amount of time.  But, I made a lot of calls, visited some others studios, and did more and more research and decided it was legit, and went ahead and signed up for my training.  A month later I was a certified Simply Music piano instructor and we opened our doors to our first students at our brand new home piano studio called Piano Lessons by Grow and Sing Studios.

Simply Music teaches piano through what they call a playing method rather than a reading method.  They use the analogy that children learn to talk before they learn to read.  Basically this breaks down to teaching the children how to play all these songs by tapping into each child’s natural musicality, rhythm, patterns, shapes and other methods.  Slowly but surely the music theory is snuck in there, but we start by getting our hands on the piano and actually playing songs!  The thinking here is that the children are not overwhelmed at first by being taught too much theory from day one, which studies have shown leads to quick burn out and giving up.   From what I’ve seen the past year, it works!

I can truly stay it’s been an amazing experience for me.  Within the past 10 months, I’ve grown to 27 piano students here in East Orlando!  They range in age from 4 years old to 44!  It has been just amazing watching them learn through this method.   They all soak it up and the growth as piano players and musicians in this relatively small amount of time is really something to see.  On a personal level I can say that the good news is I truly love teaching piano to my students.  Although I hoped I would, I can admit that when I first started there was that concern as to what would happen if I actually did not enjoy teaching piano as much as I hoped I would, but fortunately that is not the case at all!  I am finding it very fulfilling working with all these children (and a few adults) and getting to know them and their families and see the thrill they get as they are becoming young musicians.   I am looking forward to my first full piano recital scheduled for December.  I can already tell how excited some of the students are getting at the idea of performing for their parents and loved ones.

As a first year Simply Music piano teacher I have also really learned how each child is such a unique soul, and all have their own way of learning.  I have found that I am constantly adapting my teaching style based on the child I am working with.  Of course it all follows the same basic guidelines, but every child learns just a little differently and I am really trying to tap into that with my students, so each and every one of them achieves their maximum potential.

When I started last year, my long term goal was to get up to 40 students.  With 27 students signed up in under a year, I’m optimistic and excited about getting there sooner than later, and perhaps beyond!  While my schedule is getting tighter, there are still plenty of spots for those interested in trying it out.  I always welcome parents to bring their child by for a free sample lesson, to see how it all works and get to know me, and vice versa.  I am excited about getting even more students in our studio.

You never hear anyone say that they regret taking piano lessons or learning music.  I’m looking forward to watching my students get stronger and stronger going into 2014, and welcoming in new friends as well.

To learn more about our lessons CLICK HERE.
To join our Orlando Piano Lessons Facebook Community CLICK HERE.
To join our even bigger Grow and Sing Studios Facebook Community CLICK HERE.
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It’s here! We look forward to this week all year long here at Grow and Sing Studios. We invite all our classes to dress up in their costumes, and we have a week long party! Our classes enjoy making spider webs, doing the monster mash, and so much more! We welcome all newcomers in for previews at any time, but THIS WEEK is not one to be missed!!!!

Baby music class, toddler music class, craft pumpkin parties oh my!
Happy Halloween!!!