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After coming to New York to teach and continue drama study, she soon had a family. Watching her child in a music class for toddlers provided a catalyst for her own ideas about teaching music to young children. Today, in her home music studio, she sees eight small groups of children a week, each for a forty-five-minute session. Terms are eight weeks long, and the age group is children from 2 1/2 to 3 1/2 years old. She also performs at children's parties, in concerts and at nursery schools. Not only is there singing, the children play in rhythm instrument ensembles, choosing from among JiJi's collection of one hundred and fifty rhythm instruments from countries from all over the world. "In my classes there is constant movement to the beat, in my speech, where I try to rhyme phrases, and in the music. Each class is like a forty-five-minute ballet. I treat each instrument lovingly and try to develop the children's listening skills. I try to give them the sense that I love music and that there are sounds everywhere, including inside them."
JiJi is often invited to speak at education conferences teaching teachers, who sometimes have no music background, how to work musically with young students. She is also music consultant to a number of nursery schools. The sixty-minute audio cassette she produced herself, Toddlers' Songtime, has been sold to Macmillan Publishing Company's preschool books and tapes division. More tapes are on the horizon, and more appearances. No doubt more creative ideas to keep Delores JiJi going for a long, long time.