Parents play an important role in Music Together. In addition to enthusiastic participation in our classes, it is important to continue exposing your children to music outside of class! This will reinforce the joy and lessons learned in class and is just what young children need to develop a lifelong love of music.

Luckily, Music Together offers many resources to make it easy for you to make music with your children at home!

CD and Songbook

Play your CD at home and in the car as frequently as possible, so you and your children become familiar with the music. You may even want to listen to your CD while your child is playing, before nap time or at bedtime.

The Music Together songbook is a great resource for at-home music making! The songbooks list creative "at home" activities to try with each song, and you are encouraged to involve the whole family. Try using a songbook at story time instead of a regular book, and sing through the songs while looking at the pictures with your child. Looking at the printed notes on the page will help children understand that music is something that can be read, like words. Exposure to music notation will help them if they later pursue more formal music instruction when they are school aged.

"Hello, Everybody!" App

With Music Together's "Hello, Everybody!" app, it's easy and exciting to play musically with your family, whether you're at home or on the go.

You can sing along, with or without vocals and lyrics to Music Together songs. It's possible to either show or hide the lyrics and turn the vocals up or down or all the way off so you have a karaoke version of the instrumental track and can make up your own words!

Using your device's camera, you can record your family singing and dancing to the music then easily share your video clips with family and friends right from the app.

The app is available in the iTunes App Store and the Google Play Store.

To access your music from your mobile device, log into your Family Music Zone account (remember your code to access it is on the inside of your CD cover). Then stream the songs or download them to your device so your family can sing and play along even when you don't have internet access.

Download the app and start experimenting today. It's fun and it's free!

Also, be sure to like us on Facebook at Music Together in the Valley MN to get the latest scoop on research, childhood development and registration news.

As always, if you have questions or comments, I'd love to hear from you.