There are so many benefits to enrolling in Sprouting Melodies® classes! Not only will you and your little one spend 45 minutes making music together, strengthening bonds and experiencing joy, but you are being led by a board certified music therapist with extensive experience and education in early childhood development! Each of our classes is designed to be developmentally appropriate for your child, as they meet milestones and create new connections with the world around them.
And if your child is receiving early intervention services, our classes can help support those services due to our unique experience and training.
Another benefit of class enrollment is weekly emails from our Sprouting Melodies providers, highlighting a stage or information on childhood development, and how the music in class can be used to support development, and how you can use our songs at home. Here is a snippet of one of our emails:
As caregivers, we are constantly trying to find new ways to teach our little people about the world, how they are connected to it and how they have such an important role in it. In fact, we sometimes become SO excited about sharing our knowledge and experience, that we forget to let our little people make discoveries on their own. On the surface and in the moment, it might not seem like we are limiting our little people, but when we try to make them conform to our already developed sense of self in play, we are taking away from their development of a unique sense of self. Independent and child-led play is so important for the building of self-confidence, resiliency, and flexibility in future endeavors! In fact, “when play is allowed to be child driven, children practice decision-making skills, move at their own pace, discover their own areas of interest, and ultimately engage fully in the passions they wish to pursue (Ginsberg, 2007).
This has a lot to do with how our babies brains are developing. By age 1, your child’s brain has doubled in size and by age 3, their brain becomes about 80% of what their adult brain size will be. During this time, they are learning in a multitude of ways, and these are not always observably active, because the learning is happening internally through mirror neurons. Mirror neurons fire off when watching someone else perform an action. So, when our little ones observe us walking/shaking/jumping/etc, their brain is firing off neurons as though they were actively participating in the observed actions. This process helps your little one absorb and process the information before they are ready to actively participate in the actions. So, you can empower your child in class by modeling and letting them observe your actions. Think of how amazing it will be when they decide to reach out and play that drum on their own!!
Read more about your child’s amazing brain at these websites:
- http://www.urbanchildinstitute.org/why-0-3/baby-and-brain
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4006187/
Sprouting Melodies is not just a class, but a support system for you and your child! Our music therapists are eager and able to help you navigate the sometimes tricky journey of parenthood! Some of our Sprouting Melodies families have also formed bonds with one another, staying after class to socialize as their children enjoy a snack or play in our reception area.
If you are interested in learning more about Sprouting Melodies, visit our website.
Ready to get started with Sprouting Melodies? You can register online or call our office: 781-224-3300.
I said it again this month at the Melrose Public Library program during a music therapy session.
It took me years of experience and learning about early childhood development and music, but now I know that if I’m still getting that deer in the headlights look, I need to do the song again, and again, and again, until the young children who are participating in my music groups are no longer in panic mode. Once their facial expressions relax and they begin to look at me with the expression that says, “Oh, okay…tell me more,” then I know we are ready for more music making. I assure you, as adults we will tire of a song much more quickly than our babies will. But our babies are not bored!
There is nothing like sharing in the simplicity of music making with a child. As a newborn, music is a profound experience that causes the baby to stop and look around, waiting and watching. As children age, they become more and more aware of the environment and still attend to music as if it is a huge presence in the room. I learn a lot from their experience of music.
There is a closeness in making music with your child that goes beyond a song. It is our common understanding that songs and lullabies create intimate shared moments for babies and caregivers. With repetition, those shared musical moments create meaningful bonds.