Heather Nance, left, her son Noah, in overalls, Karen Abraham, center, Celeste Stinsin, foreground right, and Clare Coleman, right, play xylophone sticks while singing a song together in Abraham’s Meadowlark Music Together class at First Baptist Church, 1330 Kasold Drive.

Karen Abraham takes a drum down from a shelf and sets it on the floor. It doesn’t take long for the instrument to become surrounded by children — and for the room to be filled with banging sounds.

Soon, Abraham starts a song. “One little drummer marching up to the top of the hill.”

Some of the little drummers tap the drum in rhythm. Some, well … tap to their own rhythm.

This is Meadowlark Music Together, a new music class offered by Abraham, a music therapist who previously worked in Topeka public schools.

It’s part of the international Music Together network, a method of music education that doesn’t involve performing and emphasizes family participation. Parents or other caregivers attend classes with the young participants, who range in age from infancy through kindergarten.

“Family participation is really important,” Abraham says. “Parents are the best teachers for their kids. They serve as models for their children. I like to compare it to the old-fashioned, front-porch family jam.”

Each class begins with a “hello song” and ends with a “goodbye song.” In between, students dance, sing and play instruments. Their repertoire includes songs with rhythm and tone structures from around the world.

The classes involve six 45-minute lessons.

“Everybody has the right and maybe even the need to make music,” says Abraham, who previously taught in Topeka public schools. “The goal is the child will be musically competent by age 5 or 6. What we mean by that is they can sing in tune and move with rhythmic accuracy.”

But does that mean everyone has the ability to sing in tune?

“My opinion is 99.9 percent of people have the innate capability to be a singer — to sing in tune,” Abraham says.

And while that might not mean everyone could be a concert soloist, they should be able to at least sing in a community chorus or church choir, she says.

One benefit of the Music Together group is that groups around the world follow similar structures, so children who move can transition from one group to another, Abraham says.

Suzana Kennedy, 2, is one of the first-time students in Abraham’s classes this semester. Her father, Jeff Kennedy, says he and his wife are music fans who want their daughter to have the same appreciation.

“She’s really loved it,” Jeff Kennedy says. “She listens to the CD every day.”

And that, he says, has led to some new creativity that she tries to involve her father in.

“She’s created her own dancing to some of the songs,” he says. “It’s a little hard to follow — she’s more limber than I am.”