Shepherd School offers summer camps for kids throughout Houston
Still openings for weeklong music camps

BY JESSICA STARK
Rice News staff

	Creston Herron, who graduated with a master’s degree last weekend, taught a group of 4-year-olds about his violin during a 2010 camp.
	A group of 5-year-olds practiced their choreography for the fourth movement of Prokofiev’s “Symphony No. 5” last year.

There’s still an opportunity to enroll kids in the Shepherd School of Music’s Summer Music Camps for young children. The camps, which begin May 31, are for children ages 2-10 to explore music through singing, rhythm games, creative movement, improvisation, musical storytelling and the building and playing of percussion instruments. The camps are open to the Houston community.

“Our camps are designed to develop children’s aural, physical and concentration skills while boosting their self-confidence and abilities to get along with others,” said Rachel Buchman, head of the Shepherd School’s Young Children’s Division. “All of our activities are participatory and designed to encourage children in their innate musical creativity, as well as teach them about the wonders of acoustics and the fundamentals of music.”

Buchman, a lecturer in music who created the classes at the Shepherd School, has spent more than 25 years teaching music to young people, from toddlers to doctoral students in the U.S., Germany, England and Israel. Researching the connections between children and music, she found singing encourages brain and language development and is one of the most essential educational activities a parent can do with a child.

Currently spots are open in weeklong sessions June 13-17 for children ages 2-3 and June 20-24 for children ages 4-5 and 8-10. Wait lists are available for many of the other camps. To view opportunities and for registration information, visit http://music.rice.edu/ycd/ycd2011info.shtml.

The music camps are offered through the Shepherd School’s Michael P. Hammond Preparatory Program, which seeks to provide the best possible instruction to music students from preschool through high school.