“The child who has hated singing since birth is now happily singing his own tunes… so we’ve spent the morning making a song bag. We think it’s because of Kindermusik” – this was emailed to me earlier this week by one of our lovely Kindermusik families.

When Charlie first joined us, a couple of terms ago, he was as most little boys are full of energy (certainly not shy) and we have experienced his blossoming through our movement to music. He had all the go go go, but hadn’t quite mastered the stop stop and stop. He was also quite selective about which segments of the class he joined in with, in fact he still is, but his parents are aware of the fact that this is how he chooses to learn. Whilst some children are very hands on learners, diving straight into absolutely everything immediately, some children prefer to take a step back and observe – an observational learning style. After discussing this with Charlie’s parents they supported this learning style, and it works really well. I love their approach; sometimes we are all up marching, swirling or twirling then we see Charlie, Mummy and Daddy sitting at the side watching patiently, chatting about what’s going on, ‘look how Isla marches, do you think she likes to march fast or slow?’ and ‘would you like to practice bouncing/marching at home?’.

So whether your child likes to march, jump, leap, twirl and whirl or just sit, discuss and take enormous pleasure in watching others its just fine with us. After all, there’s no right or wrong way to ‘do’ Kindermusik (aslong as there’s a smile on everyone’s face at the end of the class), remember that we bring our children up to be individuals so let’s allow them to be individuals.

But what if your child doesn’t join in with the class? Isn’t that a complete waste of time, energy, money? Try some of the activities at home, if your child re-creates the song/dance/bounce/activity at home then it looks like they’ve been absorbing that whole class (just like a sponge!) after all. Not all children join in with every activity in their class, and I’m quite happy for it to be that way. Do you know, I think I might just sneak off to the side and watch everyone one of these days……I’m sure I’ll learn a whole lot more!