I’m writing to you today to address some questions that have come up recently regarding this horrible sick season we are having. As you know, I have asked everyone 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 baby is under the weather, remain home and schedule a makeup class.

I wanted to let you all know our 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 are trying to 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:  http://www.clorox.com/products/overview.php?prod_id=ahsds.

For alcohol-based hand sanitizers, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recommends an alcohol concentration of 60 to 95%  of ethanol or isopropanol for the great efficacy in killing germs.  In the study listed above, it was found that some hand sanitizer products purchased from local retail deep-discount stores, advertising the same claims as those found on name-brand products such as Purell, had, in reality, only a 40% ethyl alcohol concentration – much too low to reduce bacterial counts on hands.  In fact, the faulty product seemed to “mobilize the bacteria, spreading them around the hand instead of killing them.” (N.Y.Times: Hand Sanitizers: Good or Bad?  , by Deborah Franklin,  March 21, 2006)

Babies and Music

“Musical awareness is observable very early in life. [Howard Gardner,educational theorist who developed the theory of Multiple Intelligences] states that it emerges the earliest of all the different kinds of intelligence. The Papouseks, highly respected developmental researchers from West Germany, report that infants as young as two months can match the pitch, intensity, and melodic contour of the mother’s songs, and at four months infants can match the rhythmic structures as well. These researchers feel that infants are even more predisposed to these aspects of music than to speech (Papousek, 1982).” —“Theories of Child Development and Musical Ability,” by Sally Rogers from Music and Child Development, ed. Franz L. Roehmann and Frank R. Wilson, pp. 2-3.

Your Baby’s Musical Life

You may have already noticed that your baby is listening attentively to music. He may react to different types of music in different ways. He may become alert, move excitedly, relax, or even doze off depending on the nature of the music. By filling the spaces of Baby’s day with music we are teaching him the many roles that music can play throughout his life. Music can help him relax, cope with feelings, celebrate, create, and express beyond verbal capabilities.

Musical Variety in

 Kindermusik Village

Kindermusik Village

introduces a great variety of music, representing diverse cultures, styles, and tonalities, as well as varied instrumentation and voice types. Cock-a-doodle-MOO! features Cantonese Lullaby, a soothing, traditional Chinese song; Hey Diddle Diddle, a simple, traditional English rhyme and song; Ritsch, Ratsch, a lively Swedish folk song, and Armenian Lullaby, a relaxing song in the minor mode. Not only will your baby enjoy reacting to these different styles of music emotionally and physically, but intellectually it is important that your baby experience this music. We tend to appreciate and enjoy listening to music that is familiar.By exposing your baby to a broad selection of music at an early age, you will help him have a rich “repertoire” of familiar sounds and styles that will make more music accessible and interesting to him throughout his life.

A Musical Treasure Hunt

Explore everyday objects with Baby to see what sounds they make when you strike them with a spoon or shake them. Does there seem to be an object or sound that Baby is particularly interested in or finds humorous? Did you find something that you never expected to be musical?

“Children must receive musical instruction as naturally as food, and with as much pleasure as they derive from a ball game… and this must happen from the beginning of their lives.” —Leonard Bernstein

Coming soon….

Parent Perspectives for your TODDLER!

• While the average 8 month old will have no spoken words, the average Signing Smart child will have 5 signs and 1 word.
• While the average 12 month old will have 3-5 spoken words, the average Signing Smart child will have 25 signs and 16 words
• At 18 months, the average child will have 10-50 spoken words. In contrast, the average Signing Smart child will have 79 signs and 105 words.
• In addition, a majority of Signing Smart children begin combining signs and words or signs and signs together to form little sentences at 11-14 months. Compare this to non-signers, who do not begin to combine words into short sentences (e.g., “Da-da car”) until 20 months old on average!

These results indicate that ASL signs, used in combination with Signing Smart strategies, facilitate both overall communicative abilities as well as spoken language skills in hearing infants and toddlers.

Here are some links to answer even more questions: