Hello Everybody!

for those of you that are new, a very heartfelt welcome to you!  Our class is really great this year, almost at capacity, and we are super excited by the energy and participation, so far.  Those of you that are seasoned veterans, welcome back!  We actually have one student in our class who has come full circle and is now re-visiting ‘Flute’ as an older student, with a new set of age appropriate musical behaviours to watch for.  Likewise, we have a family that has done the collection before, but now with a younger child.  It is gratifying for us to see how the relationships develop in our small community, and we look forward to working and growing with you this year.

As part of our growth, we’ve expanded our teacher base, which now includes Emma and Lisa.  We won’t see much of Lisa this year as she is going to be adding to her own family in December, but both of them have been hard at work auditing our lesson plans from the last time we did Flute, three years ago, when Barnaby and Quyen were fresh new Music Together Teachers.  Our hope is that we can make our teaching better, and your experience and approach to your children’s education a more fulfilling and informed one.

Team Teaching

Unlike other Music Together Centres, we often teach in pairs.  This makes your classes better in two important ways.  Firstly, it allows us to help each other as teachers, asking how we can make our classes better each week.  Secondly, it allows us to offer a greater amount of observation and support in identifying and encouraging musical behaviours in both parents and students.

Broad & Focused Parent Education (New!)

Part of the Music Together program is to educate parents with the goal of enriching children’s growth outside of the class.  The side effect of mindfully bringing music to your children’s day is that you are strengthening emotional bonds between you by engaging in an activity that is not educational and developmentally appropriate, but also Fun! There are 168 hours in a week, and you spend only 45 minutes of that with us.  That means that our class is only .004% of the time in the week!  Our goal is to help to empower you to make music as much as possible during the week, so you can help develop the many different skills that will benefit your children for a lifetime.  Some of these include, but are not limited to:

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  • Focus
  • Listening
  • Singing
  • Expressing rhythm physically
  • Physical coordination
  • Sharing
  • Being comfortable around kids/people of different ages
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So, this year, we’ve decided to pilot a concept to structure a broad educational goal with a series of more focused goals to help the educational effort hang together better over the course of each collection of music.  This collection will see two main concepts, the first of which is Parent Modelling.

Parent Modelling

Simply put, there is no greater influence on your child than you.  Parents are idolized by their children, and a child’s behaviours are modelled on primarily on their parents.  Over the course of the next 4 weeks, we’ll be talking about specific aspects of this which we encourage you to apply at home as well as in class.

Songs for weeks 3 & 4

Since we are auditing the teaching plan for the semester, we may not stick to this plan, so be sure to listen to all the songs all the time!

Week 3

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  • I had a Little Frog
  • 3 Ravens
  • Vengan a Ver
  • Saying and Doing
  • There’s a Little Wheel
  • The Earth is Our Mother
  • Dance to Your Daddy
  • Jim along Josie
  • All the Little Horses
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Week 4

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  • Ran Tin Tinnah
  • Crow Song
  • I’ve Been Working on the Railroad
  • Hey Lolly
  • Rocketship
  • Tum Balalaika
  • Leaves are Falling
  • Harvest Dance
  • Simple Gifts
  • Aeolian Dance
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