Parenting Tip:  Tap into your child’s senses – Smell, touch, look, listen & taste to learn!   Why? Repetition strengthens the brain. So more sensory play brings opportunities to fine-tune sensory pathways they need to perceive and comprehend the world around them.   How? Get wet!  Watch a video about playing in the rain, then explore water, around the house, with baby.  Splash in the tub, feel a damp cloth, fingerpaint in the bathtub with shaving cream, then rinse it all away! Play with paper!  Different colors, crinkling sounds, does the paper have a smell? Have fun exploring paper, using senses of touch, sight, smell, and hearing.   Want to Learn More? On our blog:  Music, Movement and our Senses!   Kindermusik 7-Year Continuum: Using multisensory play with Kindermusik songs as babies, leads into toddlers using multiple senses to match the steady beat (moving to the beat, watching scarves bounce to the beat, hearing the shakers shake to the beat, feeling Mommy bounce me to the beat).   Preschoolers use multiple senses during pretend play, leading into musical discovery (See the ‘snowflakes’ falling from the sky, hear the twinkly sounds of the bells as the snowflakes fall, hear the downward glissando on the glockenspiel, representing those falling flakes).  Big kids in Young Child classes use multiple senses to understand musical concepts they can transfer to instrument play (moving feet to ‘tah’ and ‘tee-tee’ sounds directly transfers to hands playing quarter and eighth note rhythms on the glockenspiel;  playing ‘quiet’ and ‘loud’ music games transfers to playing ‘piano’ or ‘forte’ on instruments.)