ABC Music was established in the late 1980s at a time when communist totalitarianism still gripped Czechoslovakia; then, the scope of its business (music, drama education, and singing) was fully reflected in its name.

Later on, throughout the 1990s, ABC Music subsisted as the first private school of its kind (nursery school, kindergarten, and primary school) in the former Czech and Slovak Federal Republic (later in the Czech Republic). The original scope of our institution’s activities, naturally, expanded considerably to include – for instance – speech therapy, foreign languages, and reading re-education. This diversification was an inevitable stepping-stone due to results of leading-edge research in elementary pedagogy as it was necessary to substantiate those results in as wide a range of daily teaching practice as possible.

The new decade, century, and millennium have brought along with them further changes, even though we still are engaging in the field of education. We continue to host and organise specialised training courses, seminars, and other educational events and also to provide tutorials and editing & publishing services.

ABC Music has been awarded the Certificate of Competency (i.e. accreditation) by the Czech Ministry of Education, Youth, and Sports, reference No 27 986/2011-25-546 & by the Ministry of Education of the Slovak Republic, ref. No. 2274/13766/2006/228/1, and is therefore qualified to carry out courses ('programmes') of Continuous ('Further') Professional Development (CPD) of Teachers & other pedagogic staff, primarily to implement the

• a new methodology of "Sfumato Reading" (otherwise "Blended Reading") ¹
  - lays down the foundations of correct reading technique (fluency being one of the attributes);



• the interpretation of reading performance – "Coping with a Poem"
  - lays down the foundations of intonation development and drama;



• teaching aids and musical-dramatic tools
  - material applicable to elementary education only; musical 'fairy-tales' (Small Children's Musicals).

Currently, phase one of this teacher-training project is implementation in the context of the EU – countries such as the Czech Republic, Poland, Austria, Germany, the United Kingdom of Great Britain & Northern Ireland, and Slovakia (the second and third phase will see the project implemented Europe-wide and worldwide).