Making a song and dance!

Kindermusik International is the world's leading publisher of music and movement curricula for parents and their children, ages newborn to 7 years old. More than 6,000 licensed educators use the Kindermusik curricula offering music classes for children in more than 66 countries, reaching 1 million families.

Kindermusik is a community of families and teachers passionately committed to bringing music to children's lives through developmentally appropriate curricula, CDs, books, instruments, and activities for our classes and for family time at home. Kindermusik's philosophy is founded upon rigorous research and fundamental beliefs:

• Every parent is the child's most important teacher.
• Every child is musical.
• The home is the most important learning environment.
• Music nurtures a child's cognitive, emotional, social, language, and physical development.
• Every child should experience the joy, fun, and learning which music brings to life.

The company are now looking for new Kindermusik Educators across the UK and Ireland, and we've spoken to Kindermusik Maestro Vanessa Webb to hear more about the job...

I have lived in Camberley, Surrey for the last 8 years and have 2 children aged 10 and 12 years.

Until Summer 2001 I worked for a large blue chip global American company as a Senior Manager in Product Development. I went there from University with a PhD in Biochemistry and stayed there for 12 years. Although I loved the job, its fit with family life was not good. I had the opportunity to take voluntary redundancy and jumped at the chance, as this meant I could see more of my children.

I have always been musical. Seemingly I sang before I could speak! I learned the piano from the age of 5 and then recorders, guitar and clarinet. I have Grade 5 piano, theory and Grade 6 in recorders and Grade 8 clarinet. At school and university I played in orchestras, woodwind ensembles and sang in choirs, more recently in the Sunningdale Savoy Chorus. I recently taught recorders at Primary school for 5 years and also private pupils at home. I have played in the Camberley Recorder ensemble and also take singing and recorder lessons. I am a member of the Musicians Union.

When I left work, I was, keen to find a rewarding job that used my business skills and fitted well around the children. Building on my love of music, the natural choice for me was running my own business teaching children's music classes around school hours.

As someone who really believes in the value of childhood music education it was important to me to find a quality music programme. I had taken my children to music classes in the past but couldn't find anything of the quality I wanted locally. After much research I came across Kindermusik® from the US, a highly successful programme with over 6000 educators internationally.

As former scientist, Kindermusik impressed me because of the amount of childhood research that supported the programme and which is kept up to date. Kindermusik is built on strong foundations. There are reasons why we do each piece of the class - which area of child development it stimulates, which together grow the whole child, with music as the common thread. The parent is key in the whole process, the first and foremost teacher and gets a lot out of the class as well as being vital to continuing the learning at home. Above all, Kindermusik is fun.

I attended workshops and trained as a Licensed Educator in 2001 and started teaching in Feb 2002. The programme has grown rapidly and I currently have around 100 families enjoying Kindermusik. I have been designated a Kindermusik Maestro, for the last 4 years, representing the top 5% of Kindermusik educators worldwide.

I have been the Area developer for Kindermusik in the UK and Ireland since August 2004 and am responsible for developing the brand in the UK and Ireland. The Kindermusik UK/ Ireland educator community is now growing very rapidly and is the fastest growing Kindermusik programme worldwide, reaching over 100 licenced teachers in just 2 years.

Being a Kindermusik Educator is a fun, rewarding job - I highly recommend it!

To find out more about becoming a Kindermusik Educator click here