Early Childhood Classes

No one is too young to make music!

Gordon based* Early Childhood Music Classes are designed to enhance your child’s musical development and to help you create a quality musical environment at home. The class curriculum is innovative, designed specifically to develop the music potential of young children.

Children learn music best if they are exposed to music informally, much as they are exposed to language. The process of music development is similar to that of language. Immediately upon birth, children begin to learn language by listening, and then observing, experimenting with sounds and eventually, speaking. The more speech children hear, and the richer the language sounds they experience, the sooner and better they develop their own language skills. Spoken language uses words; music uses tonal and rhythm patterns. In order to give meaning to a piece of music, your child must recall tonal and rhythm patterns from his/her vocabulary. The more your child listens to music and the more tonal and rhythm patterns in his/her vocabulary, the more meaningful music will be.

Class activities include singing and chanting, movement and pattern instruction. The goal of the curriculum is to increase children’s music aptitude through engaging and entertaining musical activities, which will lay a foundation for lifelong music learning.

• Infant Classes (Newborn – 18 months)
  The primary focus of this class is to introduce children to a wide variety of musical sounds. Children will begin to build a rich listening vocabulary, the foundation for
  future music singing and chanting, creating, reading and writing. Parents or Caretakers
  accompany the children to each class.
  class schedule Mon/Wed at 9:30am Saturday at 9am
  
  
• Toddler Classes (18 months – 3 years)
  The focus of this class is to expand children’s listening vocabulary, to explore movement and to guide them as they begin to respond to the sounds that they hear. At this age, children will begin to imitate and compare their vocal and movement responses to those of others – an important step in the developmental process. Parents or Caretakers accompany the children to each class.
  class schedule Mon/Wed at 10:15am; Saturdays at 9:45
  
  
• Pre-School Class (4 to 5 years)
  The focus of this class is to expand the children’s listening and movement vocabulary and to guide the children as they respond with more accuracy to the sounds that they hear. They will begin to coordinate their breathing, moving and chanting and/or their breathing, moving and singing with themselves and then with others. They will put the finishing touches on their singing and chanting of tonal and rhythmic patterns and develop the muscle and breathing control that will allow them to enjoy more formal music instruction if they desire.
  Class schedule Mon/Wed at 11am; Saturdays at 10:30am 
  
  
• Mini Music  (6 to 8 years)
  This is an exciting 15-week class created specifically to teach younger children the fundamentals of music including instrument families, rhythm and counting, notes and rest values, keyboard familiarity, intervals and more. This is excellent preparation for private music lessons!
  Minimum enrollment of 4 students required. Maximum enrollment of 8 students per class.
  Teacher: Catherine Thacker
  Saturdays, 10:30am – 11:20am for new students; 11:30am-12:20pm for continuing students
  
  
• Instrument Sampler (6 to 9 years)
  This 6-week class is designed to help each child choose his or her own instrument for private study. In this fun, interactive environment, members of the faculty will introduce a new instrument family – strings, woodwinds, brass, percussion, keyboard and guitar. Students observe live demonstrations, listen to recordings of great performances and learn to produce a sound on each instrument.

A downloadable Schedule of all Infant, Preschool and Toddler Early Childhood Classes


For more information regarding the Early Childhood Program
please contact the Music School at 401.248.7001