Music to grow young minds
BELINDA Potgieter has a passion for developing young children, using a means every young child naturally loves: music.
"The children I teach are not becoming little Mozarts," says the former primary school teacher, but says rather they are developing cognitively, socially, emotionally and physically through Kindermusik, the music and movement programme she has taught to mainstream and special needs children in the Bay for the past 11 years.
Kindermusik, which caters for children from babies to seven, was first developed by educational experts in Germany in the late 1960s. Today, it is headquartered in the United States but has branches in 60 countries worldwide, including South Africa.
For Potgieter, 46, who is also a member of Nelson Mandela Bay's Early Childhood Development Forum, this year marks a significant milestone, in that one of her classes of seven-year-olds is "graduating", having passed through every one of the classes Kindermusik offers, from baby to toddler to young child.
The six "graduates", who have been accompanied by their mothers or grannies for each weekly hour-long lesson, have progressed from shaking simple instruments and learning how to move in time to the beat to being able to read music and play three instruments: the glockenspiel, the dulcimer and the recorder – which will make for an easy transition to the piano, guitar or a wind instrument, should they choose to do so.
However, the children have gained much more than musical ability, Potgieter says. "The programme has helped them develop their imagination and spurred on their cognitive development ... Kindermusik is a process, not a performance."
East London-born Potgieter has always loved music. "I was a minister's daughter, so I grew up singing."
After completing matric at Riebeek College, she became a senior primary teacher, notching up 12 years of experience in Uitenhage and Grahamstown. But when her now-teenage sons were little, she picked up the Kindermusik baton so she could spend more time with them. After becoming a licensed Kindermusik teacher, she started running the programme from home with just five children, two of whom were her own.
Today, Potgieter and the two educators she employs, Suzanna Pautz and Paula Casali, teach 450-plus children in group classes in her Walmer studio and at 30 play and pre-schools across Port Elizabeth.
"My passion is about developing children, but I love the vehicle music is, how it develops children socially and emotionally … I've always been a person who tries to develop children. I try to build into their lives and make them feel important."
She works with autistic, Down's syndrome and hard of hearing children and is always astounded at their progress.
Among her mainstream children, she loves to watch the shy ones suddenly develop confidence after a few weeks at music.
"I have learnt so much about children and their temperaments and how they learn – it's been an amazing experience … I'm learning all the time." - Nicky Willemse
