Music in Room One

“Music brings people together. Through music, children take an inner experience and move it into a shared creative experience. Group music-making releases energy which can be channeled in creative, productive directions. Children learn about themselves and others by playing music together and by listening to each other — tapping into hidden courage that can be played out by singing together or discovering the inner resources to listen quietly to another child’s playing.”
– Judi Bosco
Certified Music Therapist

Music is a big part of our days in Room One. We sing karakias before all of our meals, sing and dance during the day (especially during our mat times), have music playing during our sleep times, and often have music playing in the background of our day.

Recently, we have been experimenting with sounds through a collection of instruments. Nicole likes to sit in a small group, and talk about each instrument and how it makes its noises, and then pass the instrument around the circle so that each child can try it out. Once the children experience each instrument, they get to choose the one they want to play, and Nicole will play a melody on the xylophone, while the children sing along and play their instrument. We have discussed that sound makes vibrations, and that the vibrations come into our ears. Especially when using the triangle, the children can experience the vibrations by closing their eyes and Nicole will strike it with its beater, and the children can feel the sound waves near their face. They also learn about the vibrations when they hold the triangle on the floor, or in their hand, rather than the ribbon, as it makes a different noise because the vibrations go into the floor or their hand.

There are many benefits to experiencing music in an early childhood setting, as well as in childhood in general. With regards to our Early Childhood Curriculum, Te Wh?riki:

Communication Goal 4

• confidence to sing songs, including songs of their own, and to experiment with chants and pitch patterns;
• an increasing ability to keep a steady beat through speech, chants, dances, or movement to simple rhythmic patterns;
• an increasing familiarity with a selection of the art, craft, songs, music, and stories which are valued by the cultures in the community;
• an expectation that music, art, drama, and dance can amuse, delight, comfort, illuminate, inform, and excite;
• familiarity with a variety of types of music, art, dance, and drama as expressions of feeling, mood, situation, occasion, and culture.

Music also provides melodic and rhythmic patterns, which help the brain to develop its pattern deciphering skills as well as memory. Children tend to be able to learn and memorize words and ideas when put to a melody. Music is also a creative experience, and we want to allow our children to express themselves in whichever means speak to their inner self – so providing these opportunities throughout the day help the children to become comfortable and confident in expressing who they are.

The past few weeks of musical instrument activities have shown the teachers that the Room One children are highly interested in musical experiences. The Room One teachers will be creating more opportunities for the children to create music alongside more singing and dancing! If you come into the room and hear music playing, songs being sung, or see children dancing, we hope that you join in!

In our room 2 learning environment we are dedicated to nurturing our children to become school ready. There are so many important aspects that contribute to becoming school ready. Some are social learning, developing relationships, developing values that make us who we are, learning about respect for ourselves as well as others, learning how to deal with conflict in peaceful and respectful ways while maintaining some social justice. All of these attributes combined make a confident school ready child who learns as many self help skills as possible to feel that they can truly cope with everything. The component that responds to the literacy areas are met through an  introduction to the beauty of words, sounds and rhythms that the children learn to identify through words, sounds and rhythms that the children learn to identify through me very simple rules using vowels (that are in every word) and consonants. The sounds are in a sequence of cvc(consonant, vowel, consonant) and kept to a maximum of three. This keeps the vowels as a short vowel sound and the children can manage this relatively well.

Knowledge of letter sounds will help with future writing and spelling skills as the children navigate the school learning environment. They are also learning about the value of sounds and how they form words. In the photos we are using vowels (the children know them as the helping sounds) to construct their sounds into pseudo words (unknown words that have no meaning). The idea is that they are forming words with their growing knowledge of the concept that sounds (letters) form words. The vowels are used in the middle and the consonants are chosen from a separate pile to form the beginning and end sounds. Sequencing principles are understood by sticking to the rules.

Links to Te Whariki:

Communication:

Continuity between Early Childhood Education and School.

Children moving from earlychildhood settings to the early years of school are likely to:

-have language skills for a range of purposes-have considerable experience with books and  be rapidly developing secure vocabulary, grammar and syntax.

-recognising the distinctive characteristics of book language and be ready to consolidate concepts about print.