Music FUN-damentals!

I've had a relationship with music since I was a little girl singing in choirs and playing in the bell choir at an early age. I loved learning how to read music just as much as I loved performing it. I wrote my first little song at age 10. It was nothing fancy but I remember how proud I was to have written a little melody on the staff paper. I continued learning and performing music in my early education years and junior and high school years as well. By the time I graduated high school, I knew that I wanted to take my studies in music further and so I enrolled myself in the music education program at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas with a minor in music composition and from there I continued my studies at the University of Montana, Missoula. While putting myself through school, I worked in early child education. My work with toddlers and preschoolers as well as the experience of being an auntie taught me that I wanted to share the gift of music with young kids. I want them to have an outlet for expression as so much is happening in their brains and bodies when they are little. I also want to share the discipline of learning a new language and to help encourage the development of both sides of the brain through the expressive qualities of music as well as pattern recognition and the basic principals of music theory. This is where the "music fun-damentals" comes in. Studies have shown time and time again that the study of music in early childhood increases comprehension of mathematics and science concepts and principals. I know it sure helped me.

​

Now the nitty gritty about the program. This program is three years in the making and stems from my early music education, my college education, and my own personal studies on how to best approach teaching young kids musical concepts. I knew I didn't want to start with teaching a child how to play an instrument as the first step, as prior to joining choirs and playing in bell choirs when I was little my mom enrolled me in piano lessons, which I did not enjoy. Also, I wanted to approach the study of music in a different more whole way. I want to teach kids the language of music first. I want them to enjoy the simple reading of music the beauty in the written form with all it's dynamic, tempo, and notation markings. So when they are ready to learn an instrument they will have a good base knowledge of music fundamentals to perform a piece of music expressively in a way that will connect them to the composer and the composition. In my personal studies on teaching music, I really resonated with the Dalcroze method of teaching music. In short, a "Dalcroze Education is a playful, experiential approach to teaching and learning music. It is a process for awakening, developing, and refining innate musicality through rhythmic movement (often called eurhythmics), ear-training, and improvisation." I encourage you to learn more about this wonderful fun method of teaching music. My goal is also to encourage the study of composition and show the links between music and math in a fun way with pattern recognition and work sheets that will help train a child's brain to see what they are hearing. Music composition is fun and creative and full of benefits.

I have had so much fun researching and compiling my knowledge into these lessons. I hope to have a lot more lessons down the road as well as offering live virtual lessons online and hopefully one day I'll even have a classroom to share these lessons with kids in a group setting. Music is both a solitary experience and a fun shared experience also. Thank you for joining me on this learning journey. Let's have some fun and learn some music!