Since we moved the Sing To Your Baby website a couple years ago, we haven’t been posting blogs, just sharing information via Twitter and Facebook. We have some really great information that we put out back in the beginning – before we had so many friends and fans.  We’d post our blog archives just for something different. Enjoy and please feel free to comment!

Enlist Your Little Teachers

Collaboration is the soul of music. This rings true when you’re singing harmony at the dinner table, playing in a band, or joining a soloist by setting the mood with silent listening. If you’ve visited a school classroom lately, you’ll find collaboration as a growing practice.

Gone or at least going are the days of desks arranged in rigid arrays of six-by-six, replaced instead with small group arrangements where trios or quartets of students first listen, then share the day’s lessons with each other. After absorbing the first instructions or “rules of the game,” each student becomes a teacher to every other student, each helping in the other’s growth in a community of learners seeking a common goal—one of the most important life skills to learn by far

This is one reason sing-alongs are so central to our shows and parenting workshops. We never know who’s going add the final note to create that novel harmony, or as in the case shown in the pictures, who’s going to turn out to be the Diva of the Spoons.

In singing, as in so many activities, taking a step back and letting the children lead each other and to teach each other—frequently through play—is often the best way to instruct them. Do you have a child who’d rather clack his tongue than sing the words? Or maybe one who can’t stop jumping when she’s excited? Join in! Showing a willingness to learn from children is a way to model the very respect and collaboration you’re most likely trying to teach them. All great teaching is eventually about letting go.