August Professional Spotlight: Teacher Annie

Annie Keeling is dedicated to increasing children’s love of music in Nevada County, as well as encouraging respectful and calm parenting for the families of young children.
She is excited to have her classes held at such an incredible facility as The Nest. These include music and movement classes from birth to 7 and parenting classes for families with children ages 2 to 5 – and a new class for those with grade school kids coming soon.

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JamAlong Music

• A pack of pre-schoolers hop through the “woods” to the beat of the teacher’s drum. These crickets, foxes, and bunnies are looking for the bear, which is another child who is hiding in a den of scarves.
  
• Eight excited kindergartners wait their turn to pick an instrument laid out in a nearby circle – shekeres, guiros, claves, maracas, bongos, and more. Soon the room fills with the percussive sounds of these world instruments.

Annie Keeling teaches this and more in her own unique program, JamAlong Music, for children ages 4 to 7. Based on Orff-Schulwerk, each child’s love of music is developed through songs, rhythm chants, dancing, drama, children’s literature and poetry, parachutes, puppets, drum/instrument play, creative exploration, and more.
Play is the groundwork to experience music, and life, joyfully.
In addition to growing each child’s inherent musical abilities, benefits include:

• increased social skills
• movement awareness
• sensory integration
• listening skills
• sequencing practice
• developing creativity and imagination
• problem solving
• increased vocabulary
• group dynamics
• the exploration of cause and effect through instruments and music-making.

All of this is part of the JamAlong Music experience while musical competence and theory are learned.
Click HERE for more information on Jam Along Music for your Pre-K, K, or 1st grade child.

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Music Together

• A parachute wafts to a lyrical string song about butterflies.
• Rhythm sticks are clicked, waved, tapped, pounded, and made into antennae.
• Parents and young children dance around the room, jangling their wrist bells to an Israeli folk tune. Some children ride in the parents’ arms, taking in the sights and sounds of adults and kids modeling a love of music.
• Kitchen instruments are spilled out of a bin onto the floor and 12 children rush, crawl, or tentatively hover as the room fills with the banging, knocking, scratching, and shaking of pots, pans, Tupperware, and scrub brushes.
• Children rest in parents’ laps as voices rise throughout the room to sing a lullaby about stars and moons.

Over the last 15 years, Teacher Annie has been synonymous with “Music and Movement” for many Nevada County families. She teaches Music Together, an early childhood music and movement program for children from birth through age 4 – and the grownups who love them®.

First offered to the public in 1987, this program pioneered the concept of a research-based, developmentally appropriate early childhood music curriculum that strongly emphasizes and facilitates adult involvement.
In addition to the mixed-aged classes, Annie also offers a one-semester Babies Class for families with infants from birth through eight months of age. Parents learn to support music development in infancy and connect with their baby through methods such as “purposeful touch,” “sound-layering,” “dancing for baby,” etc. Over the 10 weeks, immense changes are often noted in the musical response of these tiniest of music makers.

Click HERE for more information on Music Together classes.

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Start Small Parenting  Another sweet spot for Annie is helping families with more ease and calm at home as they navigate the early years of parenting.  She teaches parenting classes, gives private coaching sessions, and is a popular contributor to The Union newspaper with her Parenting Points column.
Foundation of Parenting Class
Several times a year she teaches a 6-week group class for families with children 2 to 5 years of age. Common pitfalls and traps are explored that parents use when trying to get their child to change behaviors. Parents learn thematic tools that really work to increase more on-track behaviors, reduce parent frustration, and make family connections stronger.
Click HERE for more details on the local parenting class.

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Private Coaching with Parents
Parents gain a new view of their children’s behavior and learn concrete strategies that really work to help with: resistance, hitting, mealtime, bedtime, sibling issues, getting out of the house, whining, and more. Each session is personally tailored to the unique needs of the family. A recording of each session is available.
Click HERE for more details on private coaching.

Annie Keeling, MFA, is also known as Teacher Annie to families throughout Nevada County. She has taught music and movement to children from pre-school to 8th grade for the last 20 years. Previous to that, she danced professionally and taught dance at the high school and university level. The parenting program she teaches is a collaboration with her father – a Marriage and Family Therapist for 45 years – along with her background in early childhood education and years of experience playing, laughing, singing, and dancing with young children.

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