Music groups - what are the good bits

[cornflakegirl]

My DH is a SAHD but a musician and primary school teacher by training. He sometimes feels a bit directionless, and I, in my wisdom, think he should have a project. Which I think should be a free kids' music group.

There isn't anything like this near us (apart from singing sessions). He took DS to one session of one of the franchise music groups but hated it - said there was took much midi music.

So, could anyone who goes to a good music group please tell me what is good about it? What sort of things do your kids enjoy doing?

DS is nearly two, so stuff that is broadly appropriate for that age group would be good. Ideas that I had were singing, dancing / movement to music, making lots of noise with basic instruments, learning about the sounds different instruments make from listening to bits of classical music, and learning the basics of musical notation.

All suggestions (and criticisms of my ideas) gratefully received!

We go to a brilliant group. It is quite structured, but I like it like that. The kids are prob 15mths and up.

Usually there is some singing at the beginning (not nursery rhymes, we learn new songs or old, traditional songs that aren't sung much anymore). Sometimes the songs have actions.

There is some movement to music, but it is also 'structured' eg. stop when music stops or teacher bangs an instrument quickly and you have to run or very slowly and you walk in time to the rhythm.

She also sometimes tells a story with lots of sound effects which the kids can join in when the sounds repeat (bit like Razzle Dazzle).

We play instruments - just percussion -(again stop/ start, quick/ slow, in time with a CD etc.).

We play with coloured scarves, throwing them around.

Oh yes, we also have a 'free dancing' time which ds LOVES.

Btw, what is 'midi music'?

parachute dance always works well. Can buy old parachutes quite cheaply.

adults hold round the edge, wafting it up and down, kids underneath.

I take dd to a fab music group which runs in three age groups - babies til walking, then up to 3 and 3-5.

There is a structure of sorts with a welcome song and one to finish, but in between there are loads of songs.

We use parachutes/bubble machines and puppets. The lady who leads it has a massive resource of instruments including bells, individual chime bars, loads of instruments from around the world and drums. She needs a very big car!!

Movement includes marching, dancing in different styles - current fave atm is Latin and Jazz - imagine a class ful of under 2s wiggling to "Tequila" - great stuff!

Ds went to the 3-5 class until he started nursery - there was mmore detail into tempo, different styles of music and identifying loud/soft/fast/slow etc.

Our library is looking for volunteers to run a music group.
Perhaps that might be an idea for a venue for your DH, your local library might appreciate it.

As the wife of someone who runs a franchise based group it would be nigh on impossible to run a free group unless you hook up with someone like Sure STart or a local library etc.

There are too many costs involved I am afraid. You have to have things like public liability insurance, a child protection policy, then there are venue hire charges, we have found the average church hall to be around £20 per hour. The only other way around this would be do do it in conjunction with somewhere like a church whereby he would run it as a church member and be covered by all their insurances in the same way as the church toddler group/sunday school.

We used to go to a class where they did a mixture of listening, (children's songs, classical music, dynamics, musical terms) instruments, percussionn, and movement (dancing around to swan lake etc or action games.)

These are great ideas - thank you!

I can't imagine a load of kids with percussion instruments in a library - maybe that's just me! We've actually got a couple of venues that could work - there's a lovely new SureStart centre, or I reckon our church would let us use the building for free

MerryMarigold - could you let me have names for some of the songs that you do. And for the sound effect stories - if you don't mind?

Love the idea of dancing to Latin and Jazz - watching DS boogie is one of my favourite things!

Age-specific classes sounds good. I was thinking that the notation stuff might be a bit much for littlies.

Oh, and by midi music I mean stuff that is synthesised rather than played on real instruments. It's a cheap way of producing music but DH and I both hate it!

islandofsodor - sorry - cross-posted - thanks for the pointers on insurances - church or surestart were what i was thinking, so it's good to know you think they're good suggestions!

(oh, and in case i accidentally offended you - i've got nothing against franchise groups that are actually good!)

NO offense whatsoever taken. I know that standars vary considerably. The organisation dh is involved with has only just branched out in to the pre-school market and the one I went to with dd was great, (Lots of good recordings)but bandwagons are jumped on and people with minimal musical experience think they can make a quick buck.

ANyway, one other grou pI used to go to was called Baby Bounce and Rhyme, they are held in all the local libraries around here and there was lots of singing and percussion. The main problem is they they became very popular and overcrowded, it was too much for my ds but they were very fun, noisy and no-one in the library minded.

We go to a great music group, and it is not free. (Why would you want to make it free anyway?) It is worth every euro centimes we pay it.

This particular class takes kids between 1-2 years of age and lasts 45 minutes. There are 7 kids (and their mothers) per class.

At the beginning, they put loads of little percussion toys in the middle. Kids shake/roll/bang these for some minutes. Then there is a song. Then come the puppets that move and talk along to a song (ex: sheep comes up when we are singing "ba ba black sheep" etc). There are gestures for each song (ex: hands open and close for "twinkle twinkle little star"). Then everybody gets up and dances to a song, which is still quite structured - everybody claps their hands after "if you're happy and you know it clap your hands". After several songs, some more percussions (drums, gongs, etc) come out to the middle and the kids are left to play with them for a few minutes. Then come the puppets and dances etc again.

At first the gestures and dances went over their little heads, but these days the kids are trying to do the gestures and dances. They love it. When DD (19 months) wants me to sing a song, she does the hand gesture related to it.

I have quite a few pictures I took in this music class. If you give your e-mail address, I don't mind sending them to you. Good luck!

Hi cornflakegirl. sorry for late reply. now you are asking me to remember specific stuff....ummm. well, some of the songs we sang were from our 'mother goose' but lesser known nursery rhymes eg. 'sally goes round the sun' - we would all walk round in a circle and change direction for the next day in the sequence. we also did 'mother and father and uncle john'. the story i remember was about a train called 'dinah' but i'm sure you could do it with lots of stories if you make up where the sounds should come as long as they repeat throughout the story.

btw, our group was free (surestart) and it was brilliant. really appreciated the free factor.

i also thought it would be nice if the teacher could play an instrument and the kids could watch - my ds loves watching my mum play the piano and has done since v. small. now when he 'plays' he doesn't just bash, he plays with one finger! i'm sure he'd be just as interested in someone playing guitar or violin etc.

Free - because most of the stuff we go to is free, so why not give something back. Plus I think a paid-for group would have a different dynamic.

MM - thanks for the song titles - I haven't heard of any of them! Will look them up