BIG BRAIN, LITTLE HANDS:

Introduction Have you ever heard the term “hearing in colors”? Around four percent of the world’s population see colors when they hear sounds; others see hues of colors when they hear words. The “healing arts” delve into sound frequencies, colors, shapes, and movement, yet when it comes to teaching, the arts are usually taught separately. To me, arts and music are one holistic experience. Even though the scientific community emphasizes the importance of music and arts in children’s brain development, and the invaluable benefits for kids with learning disabilities and autism, there is limited material that covers these topics. Most of the books that aim to teach music or arts, are not designed for parents or any adult without musical or artistic knowledge. Especially when it comes to music, rarely can you find a book like this, and it is certainly even harder to find one with a holistic approach to music and arts. The few books that intend to do something similar are not designed for the children to hold and observe since they don’t have stories and illustrations. They are written for professionals with musical training. Nowadays, with music and art programs removed from many public schools, primarily affecting the underprivileged communities, we need a book like this. Big Brain, Little Hands facilitates the building blocks for children’s first musical and artistic experiences, honing skills that will remain for life, which otherwise are only taught through private lessons. Therefore, they are only available to those who have the means for private tutoring. This book is a unique compilation of arts centered around music written in five progressive modules. The goal is to awaken kids’ sensory experiences and create neuropathways with activities and crafts ideas that will deepen their musical understanding. It presents original stories, songs, musical activities, illustrations, dance, instrument building, crafts, and even a bit of acting, which are meant to be presented and explained by an adult. Through songs and stories, this book strongly emphasizes concepts like equality, acceptance, unity, environmental awareness, and social responsibility. I’ve been teaching music and arts for over twenty-five years to thousands of children and adults. I’ve experienced working with autistic children and students with brain injuries and learning disabilities using the program I include in this book. It’s been very rewarding to observe their fantastic progress. The arts in general, and most prominently music, create neural connections between both hemispheres of the brain, which helps tremendously with brain injuries and disabilities (hence the term music therapy.) Music and the arts really help everybody. They are fundamental for little children’s development. In 2004 (through Sangeet School of World Music and Dance), I was sponsored by First 5 LA to teach music and arts to parents and children ages five and under. I taught two classes, one in English and one in Spanish. First 5 LA is a government organization dedicated to promoting the arts since they emphasize their importance in children’s brain development. It is designed for parents to participate, learn, engage, and create together with their children. That’s when the origins of today’s “Big Brain, Little Hands” came about, when I had to create a weekly one-hour program for each group of children and their parents. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve received students who have had two, three, four, or even five years of attending group music classes or piano lessons, and when asked, they couldn’t even clap a steady beat. You see? Beat/Pulse is to music as seconds are to time. Beat/Pulse and Rhythm are the building blocks of music, and those and other concepts are usually overlooked in the overall musical experience. When the student (child or adult) experiences these concepts with playful activities like body percussion and movement, they effortlessly grasp and retain the knowledge. My intention with this book is that every home and classroom could have access to the games I have prepared for these purposes. When I was finishing my career as an early childhood, elementary, and middle school musical educator, I had to prepare and teach classes for my residency. Sometimes, the subject I was assigned to teach came with very short notice. One of the biggest challenges I always encountered was finding relevant material (meaning a specific song) to introduce a very specific music concept. We are talking about back in the day when most people didn’t have computers at home, so the only choice was to go to the library. Unfortunately, the library’s schedule was usually in conflict with my work and study schedule. Still, there was very limited material in this genre, especially for middle school kids. That’s why, most of the time, I ended up composing my own songs overnight (Yes, at around three o’clock in the morning!) and practicing them before teaching them to a group of eager school kids the following day. The songs I composed, together with the illustrations and the stories I created about the lyrics, were always a big hit with the little ones. I was also able to reach the objective every time. This was fundamental because, by the end of the thirty- or forty-minute class, I had to “prove” (or the children had to demonstrate) that they had grasped the concept I was supposed to teach. Fun times! My colleagues have often asked how I could compose a song and create a story on such short notice. In truth, I always found it easier to create something new than to spend hours at the library. I also realized that I had a special talent for it, which became very handy over my twenty-five-plus years of work as a music teacher. During a long and sometimes tedious career at the Conservatory, a breath of fresh air entered my life. My teacher and mentor, Maria Ines Ferrero, and her friend Silvia Furnó created an original and unique method called Musijugando. I was lucky enough to learn from the creator of this method, and I also got to work applying her approach in her private workshop as a piano teacher. I probably wouldn’t be a music teacher today if it weren’t for her because I found the traditional way of teaching music very limiting, especially for young children. Over the years, I have evolved what I learned as a student into my own way of doing things, although I’ll be eternally grateful for what Maria Ines taught me. I also had the opportunity to work as a professor’s assistant at the University of Buenos Aires (UBA) for Music Therapy students. The professor was a disciple of Ferrero’s, and she was using Musijugando techniques to teach university students majoring in Music Therapy. Many schoolteachers and parents have asked me to consider teaching these techniques to educators. I’ve taught thousands of children who cherished my drawings, songs, crafts, and activities. I collected the materials I have used in my highly successful practice for more than twenty-five years and included some of them in this book. I realized that compiling these lessons in a book would make them accessible to a lot more children around the globe, and that idea excited me.