Hey, Hey, wha’ do you say?
Barnaby here! I had the pleasure of sitting in on some Rhythm Kids 1 classes this past weekend, and had a blast! I can’t tell you how fantastic a job you are all doing as parents, singing, and participating.
I did want to weigh in with some guidance, which I hope will help you deepen your experience, and that will help transition your kids to more structured activities as they learn at school, and grow through Rhythm Kids 2 towards music lessons.
At 4-5 years old structures are just being learnt, so we have to temper our expectations of what we can reasonably expect them to do with us. They are still very free spirits, and while it is OK for them to run-and-roam, we want to also start to structure their activities so they can develop musically.
How to do this? Well, there are a lot of options, but here are some simple guidelines:
- Don’t be embarrassed, they are just being natural
- Don’t be frustrated, they’ll pick up on that
- Don’t do it for them, Show Them you are doing it
- Do be silly, and engage in what they are doing part of the time, while singing with the group
- Try different levels of engagement with them from week to week if and while they wander
If I was in your class, you may have noticed that I didn’t always ‘stick’ with the class. Like Yoga, you should consider Rhythm Kids your ‘practice’, which means you have freedom to adapt to meet your (kids’) needs from week to week. We want you to understand and try to be a bit improvisatory in class, both for the sake of your kids, and for the sake of contributing to our class and musical community.
I hope this has been of use to you and that you got some ideas about how to engage a little more effectively. Things are so energetic in our classes, and we thank you for that! It is so much fun!
We are very excited about TREE FROG coming up this winter, full of Japanese inspired rhythms.
See you soon!
Barnaby.
