This week, TLB Music‘s mini camp theme is outer space! One of our campers craft activities is creating a spaceship collage using colorful shapes. This is a great activity for young kids to work on concepts like shapes, colors, counting and how to draw objects using shapes as your guide.
Student Materials:
a variety of colorful paper cut into rectangles, squares, triangles and circles
a black piece of paper, a glue stick, a circle moon, and orange & red crepe paper streamer pieces.
Teacher Materials: circle hole punch, scissors, paper cutter (optional)
All craft supplies used are at bottom of post.
Teacher Prep: -punch 2” circles out of paper with printed moon surface
-cut or rip strips of orange and red crepe paper streamer into various triangles sizes
-cut shapes in a variety of colors (windows: 2” circles | doors: 2.5” squares |
cabins: 5.5” x 3” rectangles | roofs: triangles made by cutting 3” squares in half |
wings: triangles made by cutting 2.5” squares in half)
*If students are older, they can help with the “teacher prep” section!
Did you know that January 29th is National Puzzle Day? I love puzzles! I snapped the picture above on New Year’s Day, at the start of our 1000-piece challenge. Puzzles give your brain a fantastic workout- making them extremely beneficial (for both kids and adults) and SO satisfying to complete!
Cognitive Skills: When kids work on a puzzle, they practice identifying colors, letters, and develop spatial awareness. Puzzles also encourage kids to work on their memory.
Hand-Eye Coordination: Getting the pieces to fit just right requires this valuable skill!
Fine Motor Development: Picking up and placing puzzle pieces benefits fine motor development immensely. The smaller the pieces get, the greater the challenge!
Problem Solving: You have one goal in sight when doing a puzzle. This requires children to think logically and come up with a plan to complete the task!
Social Skills: Working in a group to complete a puzzle encourages kids to practice sharing, taking turns, and working in a team to achieve a common goal.
In honor of today’s holiday, I put together a list of some of my favorite puzzles for toddlers, big kids, and adults. The toddler puzzles by Melissa & Doug have withstood years of play in our playspace and music studio’s lobby- I highly recommend them. As kids get older, increase the number of pieces and decrease the piece size to keep up the brain-boosting power of puzzles!
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This activity sheet is perfect for learning the C major scale on the piano or xylophone! At TLB Music, we teach young children how to play a scale on the xylophone using a simple song like “Doe a Deer”. I highly recommend this toddler-friendly xylophone
Click here to get the free activity sheet: The C Major Scale on the Piano and Xylophone
Related piano activity sheets:
Notes C, D, and E on the Piano and Keyboard
Identifying C, D, and E
One Two Sheet Music for Piano (using notes C, D, E, F, and G)
C Major Scale Activity for Kids
Musical Spelling Activity Sheet (Level 1)
Musical Spelling Activity Sheet (Level 2)
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(Meeting the Banjo at TLB Music)
Music education at an early age stimulates the brain and can improve cognitive, motor, language, and social skills. It’s also one of the most natural activities to enjoy with your child, starting with lullabies. So, it’s no surprise that a music class is most often the choice for a baby or toddler’s first class! At the Upper East Side music studio that I co-own with my best friend Katia, our classes target age-specific development goals through musical play and the benefits are apparent every day. Whether it’s a mother bonding with her baby while dancing in motion to a waltz, or a toddler learning words through song, or a 4-year-old understanding how to bow back and forth with their right hand while holding their violin’s fingerboard with their left hand- we see music stimulating and benefitting children in so many ways.
Here are four of my favorite places for kids to make music in NYC.
{Upper West Side & other locations} Creative Play for Kids www.creativeplayforkids.com
This drop- in “Live Music Plus” class is developed for a mixed age group of 8 months – 4 years. “Different musicians rotate each week so children hear a different instrument each week! Classes include singing, dancing, playing music, stories, bubbles and an open play time!” Creative Play for Kids also offers a variety of creative classes in Battery Park, Tribeca, Chelsea, Williamsburg and the Financial District.
{Upper East Side} TLB Music www.tlbmusic.com
This is my company- we’re a children’s music studio and indoor playspace! We offer music classes for kids ages 4 months – 6 years. Our talented teachers introduce our little students to almost every instrument of the orchestra…up close and personal, no microphones or concert-feel here. Kids work on motor skills while playing along on age-appropriate instruments to every genre of music: in class we play Classical, Jazz, Rock, Country, Folk, Broadway, Pop, music from around the world and more!
{Union Square & Brooklyn} Música Para Mi www.musicaparami.com
“New York City’s original music-in-Spanish program, where children from infancy through age 3 and a half share the joy of music, dance, and the Spanish language with their families or caregivers, through weekly forty-five minute classes spent singing, dancing, playing percussion, and more, in a playful, supportive, total immersion environment.”
{West Village} Baby Moves www.perryschool.com/baby-moves/
Baby Moves, at the Perry School, has a variety of specialty baby classes- music, gym, art, cooking and more! One of my favorites: “Bluegrass for Kids – Join this knee slapping Bluegrass music class for babies and toddlers! Sing along with Woody Guthrie, Dolly Parton, Earl Scruggs, The Dillards, Johnny Cash and more! Our talented bluegrass musicians will demonstrate instruments such as the banjo, mandolin, fiddle kazoos and guitar. They will even teach the little ones to play the washboard!”
*Look by location but don’t limit yourself! If you find a music studio you love that’s a bit of a schlep for you, see if they offer drop-in classes, Saturday classes, or ask if they can prorate your class package in case you can’t make it to class every week.
Tablets can be great educational tools and, of course, entertainment devices for kids. They can also be great for staying in touch with relatives who live far away! My little nephew regularly Skypes with family in Argentina, Connecticut, North Carolina, and Rhode Island on my sister’s iPad. As his 2nd birthday approaches, I was thinking how, in only a couple years, my sister and brother-in-law will most likely be considering which tablet will be appropriate for him to use on his own. I started researching Amazon’s best-selling lists and websites like PCMAG.com and Consumer Reports to see what the best options are and compiled a list of the best-selling and best-reviewed tablets for children.
Not all supposedly “best-selling tablets” make great devices for children. For example, the iPad Mini
So…on to the good stuff. Here are 9 kid-friendly tablets with links for you to check them out for yourselves on Amazon.
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This summer, my company, TLB Music, teamed up with renowned rapper and DJ Princess Superstar to create a Hip Hop 101 class for kids. The class is a fusion of Hip Hop dance, music and culture perfect for kids who like to dance, perform, and use their imagination. I had the pleasure of sitting in on a class and it was SO much fun! At the beginning of class, Princess Superstar helped students pick their rap names and made name tags for everyone. The kids chose adorable names like P-Flower, J-Star, and D-Heart, using their first initial and a symbol! Then, she taught the class some classic dance moves like The Robot, The Wave, The Moonwalk, and The Running Man. The kids were impressive- one student even pulled off a believable Moonwalk!
We use these time signature activity sheets in our children’s music classes at TLB Music!
Click on the image to enlarge and print.
(click here to view enlarged map)
Our children’s music studio and playroom is located in the heart of the Upper East Side. We are surrounded by so many fantastic businesses that cater to families and in particular, young children. We put together a list of some of our favorite places and classes for kids.
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Our students at TLB Music love playing the violin. They start plucking and bowing on 1/8 size violins as early as age two or three in class! These printable sheets are perfect for learning the parts of the violin. Click through for the activity sheets!
We use these C Major Scale activity sheets in our classes at TLB Music. Use the first one to practice drawing a C Major scale and the second for identifying the notes of the scale. Ask children to pay attention to each note’s location on the musical staff as you work. Is it on a line or a space? Which line? Which space? Does its stem point up or down? Click on photos to enlarge and print!
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Use these number coloring sheets for tracing and coloring!
Click on the images below to enlarge, save, and print.
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This coloring sheet is perfect for practicing counting and identifying animals by color.
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We put together a list of 10 favorite children’s books in Spanish. Whether you’re raising a bilingual child or simply would like to introduce your kids to the Spanish language, these books are a great start to your biblioteca.
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For Monet’s birthday, we picked 10 of our favorite paintings by the artist. Share with your children and visit them in person if you can! Click on images to enlarge.
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