Often parents will call or email and ask me about what we have available in terms of private or group lessons for their five or their six-year-old child.
I love talking about this because I really believe in and celebrate our Kindermusik for the Young Child program, which is essentially group music lessons for children that are aged five to six, and six to seven.
What are group lessons?
Essentially group lessons are sequential curriculum with very specific objectives, a group of skills that we want them to master over time with some checkpoints along the way, places to celebrate.
Kindermusik for the Young Child is perfect because:
- it’s age appropriate,
- it’s process-based,
- and it’s just a fun way to engage in music.
What’s Included In The Program?
Young Child is a two-year program. In the very first year, the children learn to read and write music. But it’s done with gamification.
There are singing games, there are movement games. There are all kinds of visuals and different tracks to listen to, to really involve them and help them develop their own understanding of music.
Over time this powerful combination creates layer after layer until suddenly one day they are reading notes on the staff.
It doesn’t just happen overnight, it takes weeks and weeks and weeks, but because of those layers, they really understand what’s happening, and they build a solid foundation on that.
From there, it’s a jumping off point as they learn more notes on the staff and we learn different instruments. Then we learn about the orchestra.
Will Your Child Be Playing A Real Instrument?
The first year we start with the glockenspiel, which is a pre-keyboard instrument. They also play various rhythm instruments.
Then in the second year, we dive into the dulcimer for eight weeks. We also do an intro to violin unit, which is unique to our program. We then round up the second year with the recorder.
Over the course of the two years, and especially if you join us for ukulele camp in the summer, the children have been introduced to so many different instruments that when it’s time for them to graduate from Kindermusik and move on to lessons they already have a pretty good idea of what instrument they’re going to love.
What Makes Our Young Child Program Unique
We are a licensed Kindermusik program, and Young Child is a common offering. But we’ve added some extra special pieces to it, to really make it an amazing experience.
One of those is our intro to violin experience. It’s in the middle of year two, we actually rent violins from a local company right here in town, and bring them in, and we teach them basics so that we can tell pretty quickly if a child is going to love violin, or maybe just like it.
In addition, we add some special pieces at the end of the second year, when we’re in the recorder unit.
One of them is that we introduce recorder composition. So, the children actually write their very first four measure song for recorders, and they do it with paint chips.
Yes, that’s right, paint chips from the local hardware store.
But they just dig that they are using something so simple, that their mom or dad picked up at the hardware store, but we’re going to turn it into music.
In this recorder unit we also do a Kindermusik version of recorder karate. This allows students who are really interested in recorder to do some extra learning at home.
It also engages them in some group learning and even some mentoring to other kids in their class as they’re working together to earn the belts for each of the songs that they’re learning.
This creates a lot of self-confidence and collaboration, which are two of our most favorite values here at Kathy’s Music.
Kindermusik Young Child Graduation
Our Young Child program is similar to lessons in that we celebrate at the end of the year with a big recital.
This is important to the kids, because we need to celebrate their learning.
And of course that’s important to parents, parents want to be able to see the progress and celebrate in a big way. And so we put on a big recital with all of our Young Child kids from year one and year two, complete with cap and gowns for our year two kids.
They get pretty excited about graduating with all their purple on, and earning their trophy.
But it’s really more about the large group ensembles, the fact that after they’ve played in a large group with recorder, then they’re breaking down into small groups playing on the dulcimer or the glockenspiel, or even in a big three-part ensemble.
We pack a lot into this program.
We’re committed to providing the very best foundation for your child, and we believe that this program is the way to do that.
It’s engaging, it’s age appropriate, it’s process-based.
We infuse all kinds of growth mindset into it, and your child’s lesson teacher will celebrate that your child is a Kindermusik grad, because they know that they can focus on the instrument, because the basics of music are already in place.