One of the best things about Kindermusik is that it isn’t solely about music and movement. It is about developing the whole child, using music and movement to engage their cognition.

Cognitive skills are those involved in the process of thinking.  Most of our Kindermusik students, those from ages 2 to 7 are preoperational thinkers, according to Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development. They are beginning to understand that symbols can represent objects, which is why reading takes off during this time. Their vocabularies explode, and they can even learn more than one language at a time. Nevertheless, they are still far away from the formal operational stage, which means they have a difficult time with logic, and abstract thought eludes them. Famously, Piaget illustrated these limits with his experiments in conservation. For example- children younger than seven do not believe that two different objects will hold the same amount of liquid if the sizes of those objects vary widely.

Education at this stage, then, must center around making concepts accessible to our young thinkers. In teaching our children more abstract musical terms we might do it using kinesthetic movement. For instance, speed can be rather difficult to merely explain, and presto and adagio can be even more confusing. Nevertheless, a fast-and-slow dance makes tempo crystal clear.

Reaching beyond music, though, we introduce our young friends to all kinds of new things: from activities that foster imagination, to dances that test memory and recall, to storytime in class. And to top it off, At Home Materials support this learning throughout the week.

Is it any wonder we’re so passionate about these classes? Come try us out!