Drumming is a key part of the Kindermusik classes at Melody Magic Music Studio.
It’s a Saturday morning in the West End. Parents, grandparents and other caregivers open and close car doors, break out strollers for their infants or take toddlers by the hand and amble over to 3041 Lauderdale Drive, next door to Ray’s Ice Cream. As they step inside, the grown-ups and the kids take off their shoes and place them in white cubbies on either side of the doorway. The room is a wide, open carpeted play space, perfect for these children, who range in age from babies to 4 years old.
As the adults greet one another and ask about work life or dinner plans, the children walk or crawl toward musical instruments on the floor. Each week, a new set of hand-held noisemakers awaits. Today, there are egg shakers, clam castanets, resonator bars, boomwhackers, drumsticks and bells.
Parents settle into a circle formation on the floor. The kids are free to move around. Many of them hop between the laps of different adults.
Katherine Knight opened Melody Music Magic Studio’s current location in 2011.
“They are all completely comfortable with each other,” says Katherine Knight, also known as Ms. Katherine to her students and parents in this Kindermusik class at Melody Magic Music Studio.
Some of the children immediately put the instruments right into their mouths. “That’s pretty common,” Knight says. “I clean so much so that is possible. The more senses you can engage, the better. They learn faster.”
Knight opened Melody Magic’s current studio space in 2011. She’s been offering the music-based early childhood development classes since 2003.
“It’s not about creating Mozart,” Knight says. “It’s about using music to develop a whole range of skills: language, physical, emotional, social and music skills, too.”
Following the Beat
It was family that led Knight to discover the Kindermusik educational program. She had been teaching music classes in an elementary school setting since 1998. She had her first child, Casey, in March 2003. She knew then that she wanted to find a way to spend more time with her children. She now has four.
“My mom saved an article about Kindermusik,” Knight says. “She wrote on top, ‘This is you.’ She was right.”
Knight completed the Kindermusik training and licensing curriculum while on maternity leave. “[Casey] napped — I studied and learned,” Knight says. “And I practiced on her!”
She never returned to a regular school classroom. Knight led her first music class in September 2003, when Casey was 6 months old. At first, she rented space in neighborhood clubhouses and toted instruments around from class to class.
“It was different and more intimidating than teaching in elementary school,” she says. “I’m not necessarily the only one in charge in the classroom. The parents are there.”
That’s on purpose.
A Tuesday morning Kindermusik session at Melody Magic Music Studio
All in the Family
Parents and caregivers attend Kindermusik classes with their children. While there, they learn new ways to communicate with and support their children. This kind of family engagement in the learning process has been linked to long-term student success, according to a Harvard Family Research Project report.
Melody Magic Music Studio offers classes and lessons to kids of all ages.
“One of the things it has done is it has helped me with the vocabulary I use with him,” says Megan Ford about her experience at Melody Magic Music Studio with her son Isaiah. “As each child is exploring different instruments, they are labeling what they’re doing, and we learn to talk with them using their words.”
Ford brought her son to classes before he turned 1. “I grew up playing music,” she says. “I knew I wanted to expose him to it, but I didn’t think to do it so early.”
As each week passes, Ford says she is able to see Isaiah’s physical, language and social development improve alongside other children. The Kindermusik curriculum is strengthened outside of the studio. Knight often sends parents and students home with instruments, songs and other gifts. That’s where the real work is done, after all, she says.
Parents grow alongside one another, too. Melody Magic has become a hub for parents and caregivers to connect, relate and watch after one another. “It’s important for the parents, especially the parents who stay at home,” Ford says. “It’s the highlight of our week.”
The classes are designed so that parents offer undivided attention to their children, says instructor Faith Sasser. That’s a crucial skill for many of the parents to learn.
“One of my favorite classes is Saturday mornings,” Sasser says. “A lot of times, both parents or multiple caregivers will come. You can see the whole family plug in together.”
Sasser began teaching at Melody Magic four years ago. She also attended classes with her son Caleb, 6. “You get to experience the good, the bad and the ugly of having a baby or toddler with other parents,” she says. “It’s a nonjudgmental environment, unlike the supermarket. All kids have a bad day or morning. The best thing is to see a grumpy toddler come in and by the time he leaves, he feels better and more secure as he gets around and plays freely.”
Growing Up
Sasser has helped Knight expand Melody Magic’s offerings to include group piano classes for children age 4 to 6. She went through the same licensing training as Knight. It involves online courses, in-person training and in-the-field work. “Everything in the classes has a purpose, so we have to really know the science and tactics behind everything,” Knight says.
The music-based activities are designed for children during the years most critical for brain development: birth to age 7. “There is overwhelming evidence in cognitive psychology research that the brain is forming and wiring itself from the second the child is conceived,” says David J. Greennagel, director of music education at Virginia Commonwealth University. “The thought 50 years ago was that you wait until a certain age to introduce children to music, but we know now the earlier the better.”
Music supports and improves spatial reasoning, especially if introduced at a young age. The neural pathways that a child uses to listen to and create music are the same ones used in problem solving, from math to putting toys away. “When someone is processing something musically, all areas of the brain fire,” Greennegel says. “It is whipping through both hemispheres and utilizing the brain the way nothing else does.”
Mindful, sequence and play-based music programming like what’s offered at Melody Music is the best format to engage the mind in this way, he says. Other early childhood music education programs like Orff Schulwerk apply similar research and curriculum as Kindermusik, he says.
The earlier in development these many neural pathways are flexed, the stronger they become. This means that children who learn to make music at a young age are able to learn skills and acquire knowledge at higher rates throughout life.
“Babies have heard a steady beat in the uterus,” Knight explains. “Over time, they lose that innate sense of a steady beat. If we can help them find it again, it can help with cadence, help them bounce a basketball, use scissors and do math.”
A 1994 study led by Frances H. Rauscher — the same man responsible for defining the term “Mozart Effect” — followed a group of children who received eight months of music lessons. At the end of the eight months, the children were rated on their performance in a series of object assembly tasks. The children who participated in music education scored significantly higher than the group of children enrolled in preschools without music training.
“We noticed language developments after starting Isla in the classes,” says Liz Demartini, whose daughter, Isla, 3, and son, Rhett, 1, are enrolled in classes at Melody Magic.
More recent research links improved language and literacy skills to music education. In 2013, SEG Measurement found that 3-year-olds enrolled in Kindermusik made literacy gains that were 32 percent higher over nine months than a control group.
Kindermusik is grounded in this kind of research. It has been around since 1978. “Everyone knows what art is,” Knight says. “Everyone knows what gymnastics is. Everyone knows what music is, but they don’t know it can start from birth. It’s the universal language.”
Rick Dodge was one of the first parents to enroll his children in Knight’s Kindermusik classes, before she had her permanent space. His daughters, Katie, 17, and Emily, 15, started when they were 3 years old. “There are benefits beyond the mental cognitive skills that kids form,” Dodge says. “They gain a sense of confidence, they get to know and interact with other kids, and that turns into play dates.”
Dodge’s youngest daughter, Emily, took piano lessons for six more years with Knight after she finished her Kindermusik classes.
“The activity of creating music — my kids loved that,” Dodge said. “It’s something that you have in your hands that you control. Maybe confidence isn’t the right word. It’s achievement. Anytime you have a sense of achievement is positive in a child’s life.”
Knight wants to add a fourth instructor to the roster to offer more classes and a wider variety of lessons. Knight also has plans to expand the physical space of her studio.
Knight’s facility has earned a Kindermusik Maestro ranking, which places it in the top 5 percent of Kindermusik programs. In addition, Knight is one of the six board members for the Partnership of Kindermusik Educators. Board members act as liaisons between program educators and the company.
For Knight, the hardest part about the job is explaining to parents and caregivers the impact the classes make. “When they come in, they get it,” she says. “It’s not about playing a perfect song. It’s about setting kids on a certain path. We’re not churning out musicians, we’re churning out outstanding adults.”
