Timbalooloo

Click HERE to register for one of our open online Sunday classes:

9:45am EST - ages 5-9 (piano, improvisation, composition)

10:30am EST - ages 2-4 (composers and instruments from around the world)

11:15am EST - ages 4-7 (growing glockenspiel class)

Or contact us to form a group at another time-slot that is convenient for you and your friends!

Classes available in English, French, Hebrew and Portuguese!

The Timbalooloo Method is an innovative and internationally renowned music program that progresses from 6 months old up through early elementary school.

In Timbalooloo, instruments come to life and speak through their music so that children learn to express themselves not by having to execute the notes on a page, but rather by making their instruments come alive and talk through their music, adding character, humor and emotion to the process. Drawing inspiration from the way children learn languages so intuitively and naturally at this age, we strive to empower children to become fluent and expressive in the language of music.  Just as you would not speak with your children only in 1-syllable words, we too draw on the full musical vocabulary that this world has to offer -  from Herbie Hancock to Mozart, Willie Nelson to Miriam Makeba and Tito Puente.

The benefits beyond music are also far reaching – math, history, cultural appreciation, speech, fine and gross motor and many other skills are developed, not to mention the most important skill in life…to really listen to what is happening in the moment, and then find a way to add your own beauty.

For each age-group there are age-appropriate games and stories that all serve a specific educational goal in the child's development.  We have developed a unique approach to teaching pitch that leads into reading music in a very intuitive way through fun games involving animals.

For ages 4 and up, we offer a special class that gives many children their first opportunity to really learn to play a real instrument: the Growing Glockenspiel.  They also learn to read and write music through a fun gradual process that helps make reading music intuitive.  Each child gets their own Glockenspiel to keep forever and take home between classes (a glockenspiel is a xylophone-like instrument that is laid out like a piano with the black and white keys). However, at first their Glockenspiels only have the note middle-C on them, and are “one note old”. Each time that the children learn how to write a note on the music paper and play a new song with it, they then get a new note, and their glockenspiel grows up (the kids say “my glockenspiel is 9 notes old today… it’s almost a teenager!”, etc). Each song is introduced through a fun story that gives historical and cultural context and a familiarity with the great composers from different cultures. For example, the story of Curious George Gershwin discovering rhythm in the basement of Duke Ellington’s castle leads to learning the Gershwin classic “I’ve Got Rhythm”. The children learn to write music, and when the glockenspiel has grown all the way up, it looks just like a piano, so any song that the children know on the glockenspiel is then directly transferable to piano or whatever other instrument they choose to pursue. The goal is not just to execute the correct notes, but to really understand how music works in the process. For this reason, the class is valuable both to children who have never played another instrument before and to those who are taking instrumental music lessons separately. 

Over the past several years, Timbalooloo has been receiving increased international attention and we have developed a way for teachers and schools anywhere in the world to license the Timbalooloo Method along with the full curriculum and online resources for their use! If you are interested in learning more, contact us and we would love to chat with you about your specific needs.