Born to Play

Using pots and pans or hands and feet, young ones clap and dance to the beat at Kids’ MusicRound.

By: Daniel Shearer

Staff photos by Daniel Shearer

After working at the Center for Music and Young Children in Princeton, Yardley, Pa., resident Marilyn Schwartz (above) founded Kids’ MusicRound with her partner, Barbara Lysenko, of Pennington. The company offers classes at several locations in New Jersey and Bucks County, Pa.

   The kitchen band appears to be a universal favorite.
   Emptying a large pink sack in the center of the room, Marilyn Schwartz prepares for a song that needs no introduction.
   "This is the highlight of the day," says Kristine Burns, a Yardley, Pa., resident attending one of Ms. Schwartz’s Kids’ MusicRound programs in the activity room of the Yardley-Makefield Firehouse. Ms. Burns is here with Brooke, her 22-month-old daughter, who promptly picks up a plastic spoon and begins drumming on a bowl.
   The scene is organized chaos, however the squeals of delight speak volumes about the activity’s effectiveness. Tapping with the beat on just about every plastic kitchen implement imaginable, the parents and children clap, dance and sing — "Clank-ety clank, bang, bang, bang. Join our kitchen band."

Blake Walterick of Holland, Pa., is happy and he knows it.

   After the song, Ms. Schwartz puts on a Gloria Estefan tune and asks the participants, 17 families for this class, to return the items to the sack.
   "There’s no having to sit in a circle and be a good girl or boy," says Ms. Schwartz, describing her educational philosophy in an interview before class. "None of that. I encourage kids to explore the instruments, because the great thing about this is there’s no ‘have to’s.’
   "When they get to school, ‘have to,’ but not now. Now they need to explore. They need to be kids. I think part of the problem with adults is we never got to be kids. We were so pushed in the fast track sometimes."
   Now in its fifth year, Kids’ MusicRound was founded by Ms. Schwartz, a Yardley resident, along with co-owner Barbara Lysenko, of Pennington. The partners met while working at the Center for Music and Young Children in Princeton, the birthplace of Music Together, an early childhood music program that has been the spawning ground for a handful of other groups making music with parents and children around the country.

Langhorne resident Susan Matthias, with Eric, 1, and Camryn O’Rourke, 1.

   Kids’ MusicRound and Music Together share curriculums firmly grounded in the philosophies of Dr. Edwin Gordon, a Temple University faculty member. Both begin classes with welcome songs and end with lullabies. Both programs provide parents with CDs and songbooks to encourage them to continue musical interaction with their children at home. They even use variations on some of the same traditional melodies.
   "I think that our music has a little different spirit to it," says Ms. Lysenko, who has worked with Ms. Schwartz to develop a three-year curriculum for Kids’ MusicRound, which includes a nine-CD library.
   "When I was looking for preschools for my child, I looked for something specific," Ms. Lysenko says. "Are they all offering something very worthwhile? Yes, they are. Do they do it slightly differently? They might. It’s that feel of the program, or the teachers who are there, not to mention that Marilyn and I really just are excited to be doing this on our own."

Yardley resident Eric Gejer with Dillon, 7 months.

   The company offers classes, organized in 10-week sessions for infants through age 4, at four locations in Bucks County, Pa.: Yardley, Newtown, Doylestown and Richboro. In New Jersey, Kids’ MusicRound classes take place in Pennington, Montgomery and South Brunswick, with licensees working in Hillsborough, and soon in Plainfield, North Jersey. Kids’ MusicRound is working to expand into new areas as well, with a licensee beginning the franchise’s first classes in Florida this spring.
   "The next step in our business plan is to offer teacher training," says Ms. Lysenko, who estimates that more than 40 teachers have gone through the company’s training so far. The goal of the program is to help children attain basic music competence, which Ms. Lysenko describes as "the ability to keep steady beats and sing in tune." Research from Dr. Gordon and others suggests this training is particularly effective at early ages.
   "To me, it’s like a muscle that you strengthen," says Ms. Lysenko, referring to "audiation," a term coined by Dr. Gordon, who worked on many of his theories during the 1980s. "It’s inner hearing. That’s where it’s key. If you can get children feeling beats on the inside, they can superimpose the rhythm right on top of it later, but they must have that sense of beat on the inside."

Newtown resident Heather Lewis with Nathan, 22 months and Sarah, 7 months.

   Ms. Lysenko, a native of Ewing, earned a bachelor’s degree in music education from the College of New Jersey in 1978, teaching vocal music in kindergarten through fifth grade in the public school system in Hamilton and gaining preschool music experience at the Pennington Montessori School. She also is the founder and director of two youth choirs at St. James Church in Pennington and has sung with Voices Chorale. Ms. Lysenko worked in Princeton at the Center for Music and Young Children for nine years before founding Kids’ MusicRound with Ms. Schwartz.
   Prior to beginning Kids’ MusicRound, for several years Ms. Schwartz taught Music Together classes in Yardley.
   "We really explore world music, because I’m a rock ‘n’ roller at heart," Ms. Schwartz says. "(Ms. Lysenko) is more of a purist. She comes from more of an educational background, and I’m more of a performer."
   A classically trained cellist, Ms. Schwartz began her musical journey on a full scholarship to Kent State University, eventually earning a bachelor’s degree from Hofstra University, where she studied music and theater. After college, she found a job proofreading labels for RCA Records. She also wrote music and sang in clubs, later landing a job in the Manhattan office of Main Man Ltd., David Bowie’s management company. Ms. Schwartz moved up the ranks at Main Man for 14 years, had two children, and moved to Bucks County, where she has lived for more than a decade. She discovered her talent for teaching music to children after working in her daughter’s preschool, continuing her training at the Center for Music and Young Children.
   "You need to connect with your child musically on a daily basis," Ms. Schwartz says. "It’s like speech development. You are the role model. Your child doesn’t have to do anything. You just have to be modeling for your child, music every day. With an infant, you massage a lot to the beat. We move the legs up and down, we bounce them. Repetition is important."
   Kids’ MusicRound offers classes for three age groups: newborn through 8 months; mixed-age classes; and classes for ages 3 to 4. All classes require a caregiver to be in attendance.
   "Newborns usually don’t start before two or three months," Ms. Schwartz says, "but I have an infant class, and that’s a very low-key class. It’s gentle. I don’t make them get up and down as much. We do a lot of massaging, and a lot of suckling. They can change the baby, they can breastfeed in class, they can do anything they want. They’re just there for the baby.
   "Our mixed-age classes, that’s more toward eight months, or they can start as infants in mixed-age. Some of them love to look out and see all the other big kids."
   Most Kids’ MusicRound classes are mixed-age groups.
   "I have large classes," Ms. Schwartz says. "I try to limit it to 16 families. Barbara keeps it down to 12 or so, but I like a party. I like the energy of more people. Twelve to me is small. I do things in a big way."
   Grabbing an acoustic guitar and donning a cordless microphone, Ms. Schwartz gets the class going with her own song, "Hello and Welcome," transitioning to a call-and-response bumble-bee song, with parents and children singing notes in two- and three-beat groups. From there, she puts on the Kids’ MusicRound arrangement of "Midnight Special," and the room becomes considerably more animated. Although a dancing circle forms at one end of the class, children and parents are free to run up and down the length of the room if the mood strikes.
   Yardley resident Kelli Wilson, a stay-at-home mom, is busy singing and dancing with 16-month-old Ryan, her second child.
   "I’ve been coming here for five years now," Ms. Wilson says. "My older son, Matt, started dancing whenever I would put the radio on, so I decided to bring him when I heard about the class. We came, and he loved it. He just started dancing. He was about 15 months old and went right to the center of the circle and started dancing."
   Naturally, Ms. Wilson expected Ryan to have a similar reaction to the class, but that didn’t happen right away.
   "The first semester, I was so devastated because Ryan was afraid of (Ms. Schwartz)," Ms. Wilson says. "He just sat there and hugged me. Then all of a sudden, this semester, he just opened up. When we would listen to the music at home, he would dance and clap his hands. Wouldn’t participate here. Now all of a sudden, when she pulls the instruments out, he goes right for them and finds the ones he likes. He’s gonna be a drummer, I think."
   Ms. Schwartz says she’s seen plenty of children blossom like Ryan.
   "Kids have different learning styles," Ms. Schwartz says. "Some need to move around a lot. Other kids will just sit and stare at me the whole time. And the parents get upset with whatever their child is, basically, unless it’s the cute one who’s in the middle just doing it. But from day one, I try so hard to instill that your child is born the way they’re made, just like us. We can’t be who we’re not."
   Even without instruments, Ms. Schwartz points out there are many things around the house that can be used to help keep a beat.
   "I use cars," she says, "because everyone has a toy car at home. You can take the car and zoom it to each other like a ball. Shoom-2-3-4, shroom-2-3-4. It’s really cool. You can use anything in your life. You can take a leaf from a tree, wave it around.
   "Music is there for all of us, for all our emotions. It makes us joyful, it makes us sad. Whatever we want it to be, it’s there. I want us all to get along with each other, and I don’t like hatred between religions and peoples. I want us to get along, and music does it. That’s the whole thing."
Kids’ MusicRound holds classes at Yardley-Makefield Firehouse, Heacock and Stony Hill roads, Yardley; Shir Ami Synagogue, 101 Richboro Road, Newtown; Ann’s Studio of Dance, 1071 Second Street Pike, Richboro; and Community Conservatory of Music, 181 E. Court St., Doylestown. Ten-week classes, 45 minutes weekly, begin April 1. First-child tuition costs $145, second sibling $95, infants 8 months and under free when registered with an older sibling. Tuition includes CD, tape and songbook. For information, call (215) 752-7010. On the Web: www.kidsmusicround.com