The incredibly simple secret to making mornings in your house more harmonious

A beautiful article shared by my children's daycare, Making mornings more harmonious with music therapist Allison Davis. 

All to often I wake up to someone pulling on my arm, another crying out from the cot, and so it begins a day of meeting my little ones needs before my own this can often leave me feeling a bit short and bothered so I was stoked to find this lovely article from a mumma in the same boat offering a solution to flip it on it's head. Article below. 

I am definitely a crabby Mum first thing in the morning! I don’t want to be talked to. I don’t want to talk back. I don’t want to make breakfast; I don’t want to hear the cartoons. I just want to be left alone until I’m ready. This is not because I’ve woken up on the wrong side of the bed. It’s because I have a brain, and brains are computers and they need to load before they can work. When we turn on our computer, we don’t expect that we can immediately get stuck into that spreadsheet or Google search, we know it needs time to load. Our brain is no different! It needs to become active. It needs to get ready before we can do all the things. But with our modern-day, rushed and urgent lifestyle, we make very little time or space first thing in the morning to prime our brain before we need to start using it. And if we, as adults, experience this crabby, anxious morning feeling just imagine how much harder it must be for a child, especially a young child who doesn’t yet have the emotional regulation skills that we as adults generally do. And yet they’re expected to get up, get dressed, sit at the table, have their breakfast, do their teeth,

A really important element of music is it’s physicality. Movement, dancing, stretching. This, in conjunction with rhythm and melody, absolutely does wonders for getting the brain active and ready to remember their library book, pack their lunch and all the other experiences. work!

These strategies are super simple, they don’t take a lot of time and you don’t need to be musical to be able to achieve them. All of these morning tasks require what we call ‘executive party — just turn on the music and all have a quick dance around the lounge room together. morning jobs. Imagine the crabbiness, the anxiety that they must function and the brain needs to be active before it can make these things happen.

So if you or your children are finding that you’re crabby in the If our kids haven’t had sufficient time in the morning to play, to do morning, anxious, worked up, not functioning at your best, not some stretching, to move, to have some music, use their able to get the jobs done on time then these simple, music based imaginations, a little bit of creative time or fresh air — then their exercises are a must — and a fun one at that — to get you brain is not necessarily going to be primed in the way they need it to walking out the door harmoniously and calmly  be so that they can function easily. 

Activity to do with your kiddies.

The ability to listen closely is a key ingredient of phonemic awareness. This is the part of instruction that is skipped most often, because we assume that young children know how to listen. They may not!

After a busy morning or afternoon lie quietly on the floor with your children. It’s not nap time, but it’s a great time to unwind, which is important for young children. As you lie there quietly for five to ten minutes, listen for sounds. Become “sound spotters”. Don’t use your eyes –use your ears. There are always sounds and weird noises you can hear in your home or outside: an air conditioner, doors closing, stomachs growling. The possibilities are endless! Your part is to talk about the sounds you and your children hear. Use a little enthusiasm and exaggeration to get the kids interested in this activity. The key phrase is, “Who can spot a sound with their ears?”