In this article:
Knitted superheroes

Issue Date: October 16, 2005

Raise your child's musical IQ

Pair music and movement to help baby get rhythm.

As music programs in schools shrink and portable MP3 players lend themselves to passive listening, children today risk losing touch with their musicality, warns John Feierabend, director of the music education division at the Hartt School, a renowned music and performing arts program at the University of Hartford in West Hartford, Conn. "We've gone from a country of music makers to music consumers," he says. He argues that children must interact with music to take full measure of their musical skills. Singing silly rhymes like patty-cake, for example, helps cultivate a love of music and actual musical ability.

His mission: Preserve the lullabies, rhymes and singing games passed down by earlier generations. Along with strengthening parent-child bonds, they nurtured an inner rhythm, Feierabend says. "In the past, the most common [interaction between parent and child] was singing and bouncing a baby on your knee," he says. "The child is assimilating the tune and feeling the beat physically. That bouncing is growing the neurons in the baby's brain [to help him become] tuneful, beatful and artful."

Think it's hokey? Well, think again. Children enrolled in Hartt's early music development program, which emphasizes moving to music and singing, score higher on tests measuring a child's musical potential than those not enrolled.

Beyond lullabies: To tap into the oral tradition of American families, Feierabend compiled three just-out songbooks with companion CDs or DVDs, part of his "First Steps in Music" series ($7.95-$14.95). Many of his selections date to Colonial times. A show based on "First Steps" will premiere on PBS next fall.

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Holy Cardigan, Batman!

Even caped crusaders have a soft side. Fiber artist Mark Newport, below, explores this thought in an exhibit of his hand-knit superhero costumes, on display through Nov. 12 at Lyons Wier Gallery in New York City. Each life-size costume required up to eight skeins of yarn.

The project merged childhood memories of comic book heroes with the sweaters his mother and grandmother knitted, says the 41-year-old. "I'm a dad, and I feel this compulsion to protect my kids and family," he says. "The hero suits are part of that dynamic."

Newport boasts he has no problem pulling out hisneedles in public. Consider: Knitting retailers estimate the number of American male knitters has doubled since 2002. MenKnit.net lists blogs and links devoted to male knitting groups. Among them, Newport is no doubt a hero.

And his costumes aren't cheap: Versions of Iron Man, Batman and Spider-Man have sold for $5,500. To find out more, go to lyonswiergallery.com.

Contributing: Ayesha Court, Rosemarie Colombraro