We are excited to donate our time and talent for the Room to Grow holiday party.  The mission of Room to Grow is to enrich the lives of babies born into poverty throughout their critical first three years of development. Parents visit Room to Grow every three months to obtain clothing, books, toys and other baby essentials, as well as guidance and support, to ensure their child’s healthy and secure start in life. When these crucial needs are met, a baby has the opportunity for an early foundation in which to develop, learn and thrive.  Please visit www.roomtogrow.org to learn more.

Using the ItsyBitsy Yoga method developed by Helen Garabedian, this fun, interactive class is designed to help you bond with your child through toddler-friendly yoga poses, songs, stories and games. Come join Amy Soucy, miniMasters’ resident yoga teacher, and learn to playfully relieve stress and frustration, nurture your child’s self-esteem and creativity, and help them build a healthy lifestyle.  No previous yoga experience is required.

Printed in Downtown Express on September 5th, 2008.

Little girls in hot-pink and purple dresses and boys in pastel button-downs held bows as long and thin as their arms. Tiny violins, light as balsa wood, rested on their laps. Occasionally, a child fidgeted and the violin clattered to the ground.

On stage at Manhattan Children’s Theater in Tribeca, each young violinist took a turn standing by the piano, pressing the bow to the violin’s strings and making the beginnings of music before a crowd of video-camera-wielding parents. Most of the children were barely old enough to attend kindergarten. For many, the recital earlier this summer was their first public performance.

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Normally anyone promising “Harvard prep for tots” makes this mom run the other way, but the copious offerings at this Tribeca membership-based “cultural learning center” consistently earn praise from pleased parents. Experience BabyMuscles, MiniSigners, Gym Rock, MiniBallet, Suzuki Violin, and more.

New York Kids

Complementary after-school pickup service for PS89, PS234, and PS150.

Family Focus: Tribeca’s miniMasters

Coordinating summer activities for the entire family can be a bigger challenge than it is worth. One child has an art class in Soho, the other has piano lessons uptown — before long, parents are granted the unofficial job of chauffeur, spending every day catering to their kids’ busy summer schedules. Wouldn’t it be great if there were a place that kept everyone happy, including mom and dad? MiniMasters aims to do exactly that.

Opened two years ago in Tribeca, miniMasters is the only center in Manhattan that keeps the whole family in mind. “Our goal was to create a space that focuses on cultural education for the entire family,” Marie-France Greer, co-founder of miniMasters explains. “If you are a mom and you are running around, it is great to find one place where you can bring two or three of your children for one or more classes. It is a huge time saver.”

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Jumpstart’s Read for the Record is a national campaign designed to encourage hundreds of thousands of children and adults from across the country to read the same book on the same day.

The goal of Jumpstart’s Read for the Record campaign is to raise public awareness about significant disparities in early education. An early learning gap exists as early as age 3, due primarily to economic inequality. And because of these early discrepancies in language acquisition and literacy skills, one third of America’s children arrive at their first day of school unprepared to learn.

Please join miniMasters in supporting Jumpstart’s efforts to improve early education in order to eliminate the achievement gap, which leads to future social and economic disparities.

We look forward to seeing you all at miniMasters on Thursday at 2:30.

Please feel free to call us with questions at (212) 374-1747 or email us at indulge@minimasters.com.

Canadian scientists compared children aged four to six who took music lessons for a year with those who did not.

They found the musical group performed better on a memory test also designed to assess general intelligence skills such as literacy and maths ability.

The study, by McMaster University, is published online by the journal Brain.

Read the BBC article