Using music and visual arts, provides lessons to develop and practice thinking skills that encourage learning in academic areas such as mathematics, reading, and writing, not just the arts.

Here’s a brief overview to understand how effective - and how easy - can be!

The program includes a series of interrelated activities or lessons that are designed to be fun while developing engagement and thinking skills. These activities are easily implemented, even if the teacher or leader has no musical background. They are:

• short - approximately 20-30 minutes each

• easy to use - no special training in music or arts is required to lead them

• structured for both individual and collaborative learning

• designed to help participants discover connections between the arts and other learning

uses music and movement to encourage learning!

Because the activities are structured on the Dewey concept of inquiry-based learning, leaders are encouraged to ask questions based on experience rather than just present facts. They are encouraged to be creative and encourage participants to speak, write, and draw about their ideas without restraint.

Music inspires drawing - and confidence!

Through their inquiry learning approach, these lessons foster curiosity, initiative, and active involvement in learning.

Each 20-30 minute inquiry-based lesson includes two parts:

• activities that involve skill-developing engagement with music or visual arts that also relate to mathematics or language arts

Music helps teach numbers!

• an opportunity to reflect upon what participants have just experienced and associate this learning to their broader interests and experiences

Music helps teach vowel and consonant sounds!

Some lessons are specifically designed to help participants focus, so they settle down quickly. These lessons are especially effective if used regularly, for example, to begin the day or after lunch.

Rhythms and multitasking help students focus!

Experience has shown that less disruption occurs when is used and attendance is better on days when these lessons are anticipated.

Our books fully describe each lesson, including simple instructions and a list of materials leaders might need – things such as a CD player to play music, paper and markers to draw, and a xylophone and other percussion instruments. Because the lessons are designed to build skills progressively, instructions are included that suggest how each activity should be presented, from simplest to most advanced.

is designed to make it easy for leaders to implement multi-faceted creative lessons that will engage their students on every level.