head and think abstractly. And music may fire up the same patterns used for abstract reasoning in the brain. "Playing the piano requires you to be able to look ahead - you have to plan your finger patterns based on where you think you're going," says Dr. Raucher (Learning 25) And when certain brain patterns are fired continuously, those parts of the brain expand and grow, causing the child to have greater capacity for that type of learning.One of the most influential people in the field of music and learning is not a researcher at all. He doesn't have a PhD and doesn't work at a university. However, he started a worldwide program to incorporate music into a child's everyday learning environment. His name is Daniel Pratt and he is the founder of the revolutionary Kindermusik program.Kindermusik originated in West Germany in the late 1960s. Strong government support for music education led to the formation of this program, and it became a very successful program in Germany. Pratt was studying voice at the Cologne Hochschule fuer Musik at that time. After meeting his future wife and getting his degree. They decided to bring the Kindermusik program to the United States. In 1974, Pratt and his wife translated the program into English to train music educators at the Westminister Choir College in Princeton, NJ. Educators came from all over the United Sates to attend this program, and graduates from Pratt's classes returned to their local areas and began teaching the Kindermusik programs there. In 1984, Pratt founded Music Resource International in Princeton to serve as the company licensed to reproduce and distribute Kindermusik materials. In 1993, he renamed his company Kindermusik International Inc.The Kindermusik program has been received with open arms in the United States and is growing fast. Two new Kindermusik programs are starting this summer, including a program called Kindermusik Adventures, a camp-like instruction sess...
