By: Aurore Adamkiewicz, ND

There are lots of classes to expose your child to "music." However, the most important and the most overlooked aspect of early music learning is the exposure of "pure tones" with out timbre and rhythm to the children. This is where sound therapy comes in and applying pure tones to the body to balance and bring wellness (Jean Beaulieu's research, Pythagoras, etc).

In terms of language learning, many parents are relying soley, if not completely on tapes and DVDs. Without citing alot of obvious research that everyone has already heard, pop culture research has shown that any TV before 5 is very damaging.
Children under five-thrive and need real interaction...especially through music, rhymes, singing and signing. (With my own children American sign language was used as a "base" physical language to link all other languages.) At one point, we enrolled our children in L'ecole de Francaise of Detroit. Here they got the much needed immersion but were surrounded by teachers who were so cruel to them they did not want to speak French anymore! Thus, after the plan having backfired, I had to seek out a better solution that left me, the parent in ultimate control.

I pass no judgement on parents resorting to TV for language immersion because I understand the parents plight. I myself as a parent and an early music and language educator have struggled with this and still do. With my older two children-they had many hours of diverse language TV time-which did little to improve their language skills-Muzzy, lyric language videos, TinTin-etc-
None of them helped to produce the language savvy individuals I had hoped for-and any language learning they learned came directly from me and my not so desirable accent! In the musical realm, their very expensive Kelly Kirby piano classes at five years old proved to be little more than overwhelming them with "adult-erated" expectations and forced memorization without the needed and easily forgotten word "Comprehension" (a hallmark of Waldorf eduation).

I am a person who learns from my mistakes, indeed, mistakes are a catalyst for me to learn and grow. As a Naturopathic scientist I have researched this whole heartedly for the last ten years. Having now created something revolutionary different and amazingly effective in terms of language and music language programs, I can reach out to others who are in programs that have not worked or have not met the needs of their children. With my own five year old and other children from my classes I have developed a program that uses music, color, and language-tuned to the Pentatonic pythagorean scale which has proven to be very successful and which I am currently obtaining a patent. The children are learning music, healing aspect of color and sound therapy and language all at the same time. The colors applied to the song book are not applied half hazardly for visual appeal but are based on scientific research of color and sound as prescribed by the late Dr. Darius Dinshah and his amazing book "Let there Be Light." For more general information on color and sound, you can purchase my book "Beyond Natual Cures" where I outline it's usage and benefits.

The DVD that comes with it isn't meant for children to sit and watch over and over (although they will want to!) but as a means to inspire and help (along with a translation guide and a pronunciation guide in the lesson planner and song book).
You can go to my website www.beyondnaturalmedicine.com and click on AMHC which is the language/music program-there are videos on the website you can watch to see how it works and a trailor for the movie.
For those of you who have already bought phase I and are hungry for more, Phase II should be available in the Summer 2008.
Phase II has less folk songs and more classics like,
The Habenera by Bizet, Beethoven's Seventh Alleghretto, Hijo de La Luna, and Edith Piaf's La Vie en Rose, & Strauss's Fledermaus - and an Arabic song called Yalla.
The diatonic scale is not introduced until phase III but we do start intervals in II....so it builds simply, easily and evenly.

Good luck to you in Music, Language, and Health!