Music Conference

December 13, 2007 at 10:27 pm | In Mosaic music conference | 1 Comment

From January 6th to the 11th, the Victorian Orff Schulwerk Assosiation is holding a wonderful music conference. It is being held at Toorak College, Old Mornington Rd, Mt Eliza,

Melways Map 101 G10 If you would like to know more, go to http://www.vosa.org/

You can come as a day visitor, or for the whole 6 days. We have international presenters as well as Aussie presenters. We are catering for early childhood, primary, secondary and studio teachers. There is still time for you to book in and attend.

I will be there. I am presenting on the Monday along with Wendy Jensen who is flying in from New Zealand. We will have our books and cd’s for sale during the conference.

   

Cd’s for Christmas

December 11, 2007 at 11:03 am | In music and young children | 2 Comments

Do you need to find a Christmas present for your young children? Kids Music Company has a whole range of fantastic cd’s for kids from 1 up to 12. We have a Marimba book and cd which would be fabulous for 9 to 12 year olds, two recorder cd’s and accompanying books, and a large range of fantastic cd’s with original award winning  songs for children from 1 up to 8.

Anyone who mentions this blog and my name when ordering up until Christmas, will get a 10% discount on sales.

expanding into WA

December 10, 2007 at 2:49 am | In 1 | 5 Comments

Next year I am going to go to Western Australia to do some workshops with teachers of young children.

I have started the initial search with a lovely lady from Perth who has given me some venues to look at. I am looking at coming over around about the 25th June and staying until the 4th July.

If you are over on that side of Australia, or you know anyone who lives there and who could be interested in coming to a fun, educational workshop, stay tuned.

music classes

December 5, 2007 at 10:21 am | In music and young children | 3 Comments

I was pretty blown away today by the children at my music school. I have 2 to 4 year olds in one particular class, and we did a song called “Pass the drum”.

This song consists of counting up to 8 while beating on the drum, and then passing the drum to the person who is sitting next to them.  This is quite a difficult thing to learn, and often I have had 5 year olds who take a bit of time to get used to passing it in the same direction as every body else.

The children today had no difficulty in passing their drum to the next person. I was so thrilled to see this. Most of the class had done the song about six months ago, and they still remembered what to do, and those that hadn’t done it before had no problems with the song either.

Also today, one of the very shy kids started answering questions, and joined in really well. It is so heartening to see children develop confidence by being in a non threatening, fun environment.

Incidentally, Pass the Drum can be found in our cd called Echo Fred. If you would like to know more about this cd, or would like to buy it, please  contact me.

Musical Memories

December 4, 2007 at 11:38 am | In memories of music in early childhood | Leave a Comment

Thanks to those people who responded about their memories of music as they were growing up.  Just reading their comments made me remember more experiences I had when I was young.

When I was in grade 4, the music teacher at our school decided to start a choir. I think my Mum must have had something to do with it because she was the pianist for it. She was (and still is) a wonderful piano player. I wish I was half as good as her.

Anyway, I diverse. We were given a song from “The sound of Music”. Do you remember the song when there was a party in the house, and the children had to go to bed? They sang “So long, farewell, etc.”  Well, I was given one of the solo parts. I was so excited and had no fear. I sang it with gusto.

When I was 16, I was in a choir, and was given a solo part. I have to say that it was a different story then. I stood up to sing, and nothing came out except a whisper. Somehow between the age of 10 and 16, I had become very self conscious.

Now that I am a lot older, I don’t care, and sing on my own quite happily. I must say that it is just as well, as I lead workshops for teachers (with sometimes up to 100 people)  around Australia.

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