Gifted

Children
You can identify children with a musical gift because they are preoccupied with music. They have a sense of melody, measure, rhythm and patterns and can sing songs in tune. They can play songs by ear and invent melodies.
Other characteristics
- Almost always music in the background (whistling, humming)
- Sensitive to sounds (birds, bells from afar, traffic)
- Rhythm in the language (rhymes)
- Mnemonics to remember something
- Melodic accents in oral language (voice inflections, tone, intonation, tempo)
- A musical child can often lively read out loud
Talent and / or (high) giftedness is now recognized and acknowledged. At school, it is difficult to find the right balance between sufficient challenge and a good connection with other children. While a child can be two years ahead of it’s peers, he is far too young to play with the big kids. Despite enrichment and deepening in his own group, he probably isn’t challenged enough. The danger is that he becomes demotivated, adapts and will be underachieving.
Violin lessons
To learn to play violin provides an excellent level of challenge that is not bound to age. The violin is a complex instrument that requires daily exercise, even for a talented or (high) gifted student. As the violin lessons are adapted to the personal development, it activates and encourages the student’s cognitive skills. This benefits the overall school performance in the long term.
Annemarie is also gifted. From experience and from her fascination with talented and gifted, she has done a lot of research in that area. With her understanding attitude and structural approach she found the right way to address (high) gifted and talented students and how to encourage them.