Synopsis
Judith Kunz (cathedral choir director):A unit of the Domsingzwerge consists of singing songs, there are rituals, a welcome song, a farewell song. Rhymes are recited, movement games are played, rhythm training is interspersed in very small units. We focus on all the senses, on feeling, hearing, sensing, sensing oneself, but also simply listening, all the senses are stimulated in these 45 minutes with many small units, and expanded and developed from lesson to lesson.
Sabine Hirler (DomSingZwerge course leader):
Movement is extremely important because the children link language, language impressions and also the meaning of the songs, for example the cat creeps or it hisses, with their own movement. So they learn by doing. You can tell them a lot, or put them in front of a CD player, or stream something, but they learn best from people, they can only learn language from a person. You can't put children in front of a television and then hope that after a year or a year and a half they will be able to speak their first sentences. You can only do that with a person. And this linking of the different areas in the brain of language, movement, fine motor skills and cognition, i.e. that I understand what I am doing at a very child-orientated basal level, is achieved by a play song or movement to music. I don't turn on any recordings, I always make the music myself, I'm always fully involved. And of course that's different to having music on that's like something from outside. So I'm always fully involved in what's happening and I think that perhaps has a particularly intense effect on the children.
Judith Kunz (Cathedral Choir Director):
Singing releases vibrations, and that affects us humans. It meets a counterpart. It meets a listener, which in turn meets the person who is singing with me. And that creates a connection, especially between parent and child, that I think only very rarely flashes up in everyday life. And that is something very special. The parents also report that they come back to this singing, to this form of expression in general, which many had already treated as unachievable for themselves, but by demonstrating and imitating with the child, by putting themselves at the child's eye level in this course, that is something that constitutes a very special moment in the parent-child relationship.
