MUSIKGARTEN,
family music for infants to 5-year-olds
Family Music for Babies
For Parent and Child 0 to 18 months
By engaging your baby in music classes early on, you take the first step toward bonding musically with your child, nurturing your baby’s musical aptitude and enriching your family’s life through active music-making.
Activities include bouncing songs and rocking songs, finger plays and body awareness games, dances and instrumental play, all of which stimulates the brain, fosters physical development, and cultivates listening skills in a sequential, lightly structured format.
$12/30 minute class, payable by the term
materials: $40 (CD, instrument pack & parent book)
Call String Connection today at 517-664-1111 for class times and availability!
Family Music for Toddlers
A Step to Music Literacy
In our Family Music for Toddlers children ages 1 ½ to 3 ½ with their caregivers explore music in bouncing, rocking, and dancing. All children are innate singers! In fact, the cooing of a child is very light, high, and musical. By keeping the child in a singing-rich environment your child will retain his/her singing voice and gain control of it in an ever-expanding range.
All children have to be taught to listen well. Family Music for Toddlers class is the perfect environment for nurturing this critical skill. Our focused listening activities direct the children to listen to short examples of familiar sounds that tie in with the activities.
$12/30 minute class, payable by the term
materials: $35 (CD, rhythm instrument & parent book)
Call String Connection today at 517-664-1111 for class times and availability!
CYCLE OF SEASONS
For Pre-School Age Children
All children love stories and the rhythm and rhymes of poetry. The Cycle of Seasons nurtures the child’s language development in stories of nature and the rhythm and rhymes of poetry. The children giggle as they sing and play instruments to Five Freckled Frogs. Their imaginations are busy as they “become” the tadpole as he gracefully moves around the pond. Finally, they settle down into the listening corner to listen to the recorded sounds of green frogs and bull frogs, focusing and refining their listening skills.
Through these activities children are learning the language of music. In each class the children echo a series of tonal and rhythm patterns. These patterns are found in the singing repertoire, and they will be the first patterns the children will learn to read in music notation in the coming years.
$12.50/40 minute class, payable by the term
materials: $40 (CD, cards for listening lessons & parent book)
Call String Connection today at 517-664-1111 for class times and availability!
Music Makers at Home in the World:
The Next Step to Music Literacy
In Music Makers: At Home in the World, children age 4 ½ to 5 are involved in many singing activities, listening with increased aural discrimination skills, moving with growing control and expressivity, learning complex dances, and working with an ever-expanding vocabulary of rhythm and tonal patterns. This two-term class advances from the music and activities experienced in Cycles of Seasons; if music and movement experiences are new to your child, consider enrolling your 4 year old in Cycles for at least one term before advancing to Music Makers.
$15.50/60 minute class, payable by the term
materials: $50 (2 packets, each containing a CD, instrument page, game pieces, and parent book, all in an art folder depicting a natural habitat for listening games)
Call String Connection today at 517-664-1111 for class times and availability!
Click the link to the right for more information.
Meet our Instructor: Alix Jenkins
Alix earned an early reputation at the piano as an accompanist and music student at Mason High School. After completing music degrees at Wheaton College, Illinois and later, at Michigan State University in vocal music education she conducted secondary choirs and taught general music at Holt Lutheran and New Covenant Christian schools. She maintains a piano studio as a certified teacher-member of the Capital Area Music Teachers Association. Alix keeps her playful side refreshed by a husband, son, and two cats, along with serving as music director at Ascension Lutheran Church in East Lansing.
As research has opened new understandings of how we learn, Alix has applied her interest in developing music aptitude in young children through teaching Musikgarten. She states, “My philosophy is, music study and practice make us more human. It gives people of all ages a chance to develop in ways that reach beyond everyday life and work.” In keeping with her vision, Alix now teaches early childhood Musikgarten classes through String Connection, Okemos.
