Friday, July 20, 2007

Musikgarten for toddlers

In my earlier post, I mentioned about sending Rowena for Musikgarten. PErsonally, I had a good experience with Musikgarten with Harvynna. Harvynna started Musikgarten at about 14-15 months. Initially, she used to just run around and do her own things, she would cry sometimes, or she will look at everyone. She put everything into her mouth including the bells, sticks and other props.
The first 2-3 sessions were quite bewildering to me, as I saw the other children participating actively while Harvynna was in her own world.

Slowly, she started to join in as she got used to the people and environment. Slowly, she started to enjoy the activities and picked up songs very fast. She learnt a lot of words and used to recall and recap what she learnt at home. We were lucky that her teacher was very good and did not really follow a structure but rather went with the flow. The children seemed to love her as she was very animated.

I think Musikgarten is effective provided the teacher is good. They have dances, songs, actions, musical instruments e.g. drums, jingles, bells and use simple props like scarves, balls, parachutes.Harvynna defintely benefited from the classes.

I brought Harvynna for a Yamaha Music trial class (for 3 year olds) in Bangsar but I found it very boring and structured. The teacher was so liveless and passive. Basically, everyone had to sit on the organ stool and was confined to a small room. I made up my mind immediately not to enrol her there.

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