Integrating new students into an existing developmental program is counterproductive, offering one more reason to offer a beginning class for ages 0-5 rather than grouping children by age. The 2, 3, 4, or 5 year old simply doesn’t have the readiness for a class of experienced 2, 3, 4, or 5 year olds. Musical readiness has to be the criteria for placement of a new student, and musical readiness at these young ages is dependent upon aural input. Most effective is to place every new student, ages 0-5, in your beginning class, requiring at least a full semester before moving to any other class. If the child is 4 or 5, you might toward the end of the term keep the child after class to engage interactively, and the next term place the child in a class fully engaged with interactivity, accommodating the different levels as addressed in Classes of Mixed Levels.

Your greater challenge in accommodating new students might be the parents, requiring that you address the process of music learning in simple terms. Many parents would accept the logic of needing the musical readiness to be in an advanced class. Some, however, might feel insulted that their child has to be in a class with younger children—another reason to offer a beginning class for ages 0-5 rather than grouping children by age. Some parents might offer that their child is musically gifted, tuneful, and singing all the time at home, so surely ready for an advanced class. Those parents might accept that assessment of music learning at these ages is more dependent upon input than it is on output. The more difficult situation might be children who have come from another early childhood music program.  Parents may assume that since the child spent 3 or 4 terms in another program that the child would be ready for your advanced classes, yet it is highly unlikely that the child would have sufficient immersion in meters and tonalities to have the musical readiness for your advanced classes. Better to insist that the child spend one full term in the beginning class before moving on. You can liken the process to learning language, that the beginning class immerses children in the mother tongue of the musical mind.

The child of musicians being raised in a highly musical environment, or one who is already accomplished on an instrument may come with a very rich musical background. Praising parents efforts and intent to prepare their child for a lifetime of engagement in music and/or performance, you can indicate that the child will become an even finer musician when fluent aurally and orally in the various meters and tonalities, movement, and Art Songs written for young ages, and that such experience will improve rhythmicity, intonation, and musicality throughout a lifetime of making music.