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Rhythm Time wins Solihull Business Award

At the Solihull Business Awards Rhythm Time was awarded the Creative Excellence Award.

Now an annual event in the business life of Solihull (West Midlands), the Business Awards allow all types of businesses, small or large, to be recognised for their achievement and success. A panel of selected sponsors and members of the Solihull Business Community judge entries against carefully set criteria: each category requires elements to be met to achieve a standard of recognition. As well as winning the Creative Excellence Award, Rhythm Time was nominated for the Community Involvement and Customer Service Awards. The Creative Excellence Award acknowledges creative achievement in the development of a produce or service from a new or existing local business: the company must demonstrate how it has accessed specific market places and products and shown direction and growth from its activities.

Posted on 1st January 2007

Music helps brain development

The Times, September 20, 2006

Why music lessons are good for the memory
By Mark Henderson

Learning to play an instrument may affect the way in which a young brain develops

MUSIC lessons may improve memory and learning ability in young children by promoting different patterns of brain development, a study shows.

After a year of musical training, children aged between 4 and 6 performed better at a standard memory test than did children who were not taught music.

Because good scores on the test - which involved listening to a series of numbers and remembering them - were associated with general intelligence skills such as literacy and mathematical ability, the findings suggest that music could be useful for building the learning capacity of young minds.

Previous studies have shown that older children given music lessons become better at IQ tests than those who are musically untrained, but this is the first to show such a benefit in children so young.

Professor Laurel Trainor, of McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, also found clear differences in the ways in which children's brains responded to sound after a year of musical training.

"This is the first study to show that brain responses in young, musically trained and untrained children change differently over the course of a year," she said. "These changes are likely to be related to the cognitive benefit that is seen with musical training."

Professor Trainor's team looked at 12 children, 6 of whom had just started extra-curricular music lessons and 6 of whom were not being taught any music beyond that included as a standard part of their school curriculum.

The music lessons were taught at a Suzuki school, using a Japanese approach that encourages very young children to listen to and imitate music before they learn to read it.

During the year all 12 children had their brains examined four times using magnetoencephalography (MEG), which measures magnetic fields outside the head. These fields are associated with the electrical currents generated by nerve activity, and each child was played two types of sound - white noise and a violin tone.

The MEG measurements showed that all children responded more to violin sounds than to white noise, reflecting a preference for meaningful tones, and their response times fell over the course of the year as their brains matured.

Among the children receiving the music lessons, however, responses to the violin tones changed more over the year.

During the first and last scanning session, the children were also given a music test that examined their ability to discriminate between melodies and harmonies, and took the general memory test. The musically trained children improved more on both measures.

"That the children studying music for a year improved in musical listening skills more than children not studying music is perhaps not very surprising," Professor Trainor said. "On the other hand, it is very interesting that the children taking music lessons improved more over the year on general memory skills that are correlated with non- musical abilities such as literacy, verbal memory, visiospatial processing, mathematics and IQ.

"The finding of very rapid maturation [of responses to] to violin sounds in children taking music lessons fits with their large improvement on the memory test.

"It suggests that musical training is having an effect on how the brain gets wired for general cognitive functioning related to memory and attention."

Takako Fujioka, of the Rotman Research Institute, who was also involved in the study, said: "Previous work has shown assignment to musical training is associated with improvements in IQ in school-aged children.

"Our work explores how musical training affects the way in which the brain develops. It is clear that music is good for children's cognitive development and that music should be part of the pre-school and primary school curriculum."

Posted on 20th September 2006

Rhythm Time helps promote National Yummy Mummy Week

Rhythm Time is working with CLIC Sargent, the UK's leading children's cancer charity to help promote its National Yummy Mummy Week campaign.

In 2006, National Yummy Mummy Week, sponsored by zylom.com, involved about 100,000 mums in fundraising events across the country. Some had coffee mornings at their local nurseries; some did sponsored family events and some invited friends round for an evening of pampering. All of the money raised from the event goes to help children with cancer across the UK and their families.

One Yummy Mummy said, "We held a Pamper and Play event to raise money this year. We asked a hotel to give us a couple of rooms at no cost then turned one of them into a giant play area for the children with ball pit and soft play equipment. We also had a nanny agency who donated six professional nannies to look after the children. In the other room we had a tranquil peaceful area with lots of lovely smells and sounds filled with local professionals offering massage, life coaching, make-up advice and a spinal health check. Parents were therefore able to be pampered to perfection whilst their children had a fantastic time playing and being well looked after. We didn't pay a penny out for anything and got loads of help and support from everyone - a fab day out and a pleasure to organise!"

Every day 10 families are told their child has cancer. CLIC Sargent is the only charity that offers them all round care and support. That's because we're there… caring every step of the way:

• During treatment - specialist nurses, doctors, play specialists, Homes from Home
• In hospital & at home - specialist social care and family support
• In the community - specialist youth services, holidays, grants, helpline
• After treatment - helping survivors, supporting those bereaved, research

CLIC Sargent provides the widest range of services and the highest number of care professionals. Our services are tailored to family-needs, using feedback from our service-users. As advocates we give children, young people and their families a strong national voice, helping them to be heard and understood. Our clinical research looks at ways of improving treatment and managing side-effects, to help patients and to improve quality of life for survivors.

A very special Yummy Mummy
When Claire's son Toby was diagnosed with a cancerous tumour on his spine at the age of seven months her world fell apart. Happily, after months of chemotherapy and a major operation Toby, now aged three, is in the clear and getting on with life with the help of his mini Zimmer frame.

'CLIC Sargent has been fantastic,' says Claire. 'We stayed at one of their Homes from Home just near the hospital in Oxford while Toby was having his treatment. It was a lovely house and it meant we could have a break from the hospital.'

Last year, Toby's nursery decided to say thank you to CLIC Sargent by taking part in Yummy Mummy Week 2005. 'They did something different each day of the week,' says Claire.

'They held a chocoholics' evening one night, which all the mums absolutely loved. Another day all the kids and staff went to nursery in fancy dress and one day they put double-sided sticky tape along a corridor and all the parents stuck coins to it. People were so generous and all in all we raised £3,000.

For more information go to http://www.yummymummy.org.uk/

Posted on 8th June 2006