It’s late morning on the TCU campus and the classroom is crawling with activity. There’s color and movement, as students begin today’s lesson … bouncing and clapping to tuneful “golden oldies” like Little Miss Muffet, Little Jack Horner and The Cow Jumped Over the Moon.

What? This is college? Definitely.

The Music Preparatory program in the TCU School of Music has a long history of offering lessons and classes to children and adults in the Fort Worth community. It began with piano lessons in the early 1970s and has expanded to include year-round private instruction in violin, viola, cello, guitar, flute, voice and composition.

In addition to regular Music Prep faculty, teaching staff includes TCU School of Music professors, graduate students and undergraduate students.

Housed in the lower level of Ed Landreth Hall, Music Prep currently enrolls more than 700 youngsters and adults each semester. Nearly half of those are part of the Early Childhood Music program that originated about 30 years ago and offers Music Together® parent-and-child classes for infants, toddlers and little ones up to age seven.

The concept of these sessions is not to teach music to babies but to provide 30 minutes of joyful play interaction with a parent or grandparent that just happens to be set to a musical background. “Children want to do what their parents are doing,” explains TCU’s Early Childhood Music coordinator Jennifer DeSantis, nodding at the cozy circle of families moving to the teacher’s singing and guitar accompaniment. “They’re all having fun with music. By absorbing the tones and rhythms, regular exposure like this gives youngsters a huge head start when it comes to the ability to sing in tune and keep a steady beat,” says DeSantis.

There are also classes exclusively for introducing the keyboard and piano readiness. These Early Childhood class experiences “feed into taking private lessons later on,” DeSantis adds. “Other instruments become easier with these basic skills at hand.” “It really works!,” says the enthusiastic mom of a two-year-old and seven-year-old in the program.

Elaine Tubre started both her girls in MusicTogether® as toddlers and can verify how the skills “stick with them” since older daughter Cadence moved seamlessly into private piano lessons when she became old enough.  Mrs. Tubre has a interesting side note to offer where her youngest, Stella, is concerned.

CDs of classroom music are part of the enrollment package and can really come in handy on the home front, she observes. “Whenever my two-year-old has a meltdown, we bust out with MusicTogether® songs and it calms her down,” she says. “I keep the CDs in the car too.”

Leanne Kirkham, director of TCU’s Music Preparatory Division, calls it “a very successful, conservatory-like program” that’s available to the Fort Worth community. Sixteen-week sessions are offered each fall and spring semester, with an 8-week program in the summer.

Dr. Richard Gipson, director of the TCU School of Music, notes that Music Prep is a win-win arrangement for his division. Families are getting the benefit of instruction from top-level faculty while students have an unparalleled opportunity to do practice teaching for their eventual careers in music education.

Complete information on class options, schedules and fees is available online at http://www.musicprep.tcu.edu/ or phone 817-257-7604.