Culture // Current

Bolivia: Lake Titicaca at dangerously low levels

Water evaporation due to climate change is responsible for Lake Titicaca dropping an... more

JanforGore
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Kids Reenact The First Thanksgiving With Smallpox Blankets And Whiskey (VIDEO)

How did the Pilgrims celebrate the first Thanksgiving? While it may appear that these... more

Pericles_Lewnes
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Japan falls madly in love with piano prodigy

Who is Nobuyuki Tsujii? Why, he's the young man in the photo above -- a gifted 21 year... more

slagface
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Vampires Can Suck It

Pretty much everyone is psyched to see 'New Moon.' But not Ben Hoffman. infoMania... more

Ben_Hoffman
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16 hours ago
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psnob in her Art Studio

psnob in art studio

psnob
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The Great Indian Railway

A short film documenting train travel in India. A diverse array of shots and scenery,... more

WildernessFilmsIndiaLtd
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14 hours ago
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Man raises son to speak only Klingon

http://blogs.citypages.com/blotter/2009/11/dinkytown_dad_s.php Is this taking the... more

SleepDirt
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Guns welcome: Packing heat at Starbucks for all the world to see

The 2nd amendment rules , coffee ,tea and a 9 mm. Read more:... more

notyourbabiesdaddy
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22 hours ago
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"Going Rogue" Goes Rogue: Sarah Palin's Book Shoots Rachel Maddow

Sarah Palin's book "Going Rogue" was everywhere--every media outlet in the States has... more

atomiclegion
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Silly Things Sho Extended till November 29th

Not too late to get down to Silly Things in Hackney - extended for two more weeks due... more

derider
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10 classical recordings to start your kid with

When we start children out on reading, we don't hand them a copy of "Moby Dick" or "Finnegan's Wake" and say, OK, dive in. No, we start with picture books, with simple texts in monosyllables, with stories about other children and animals. We start by reading to them, and with them. We show them how.

A lot of the great masterpieces of classical music are the equivalent in depth and difficulty to "Moby Dick" and "Finnegan's Wake." So, we don't want to start there. We want to start out with short, mostly simple pieces and we want to listen with them.

Kids need two things, more or less, in a piece of classical music. They need a regular beat or they need some sort of story or picture (in the mind's eye) to go along with the music. (They don't need both in every piece.) The regular beats appear mostly in dance, or dance-like, pieces, such as "The Nutcracker Suite" or much of Baroque music. The stories or pictures appear in programmatic works such as "The Flight of the Bumblebee" or "The Carnival of the Animals."

Make it a regular habit to listen with your child, just as you did (or were supposed to) when they started out reading. When my own son was still in diapers, we'd have a short listening session every night just before his reading and bedtime. We'd play a lot of the same things night after night, but pretty soon he had a fairly big repertoire. And you'd be surprised what worked. I still remember him rocking up and down in front of the speakers to Schubert's song "Das Wandern" (from "Die schöne Müllerin") as sung, in German, by the incomparable Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. But then again, it has a powerful, regular beat.

So, establish a listening time. Then listen. That is, don't chat, or watch television, or read, or eat dinner. Give your full attention to the music. Sure, have fun, dance around, conduct the orchestra, crash cymbals or beat on drums. But make the music the thing, the only thing.

10 classical recordings to start your kid with:

1. Bernstein Favorites "Children's Classics"
2. Listen, Learn And Grow "Playtime Imagination"
3. Vivaldi: "The Four Seasons."
4. Classics From The Crypt
5. Tchaikovsky: "The Nutcracker" Bernstein Century
6. John Philip Sousa : Marches
7. Beethoven: Symphonies Nos. 5 and 7
8. Walter Carlos "Switched on Bach"
9. Franz Suppe "Light Cavalry" Overture
10. Carlos Kleiber "New Year's Concert 1992"When we start children out on reading, we don't hand them a copy of "Moby Dick" or... more