MUSIC SKILLS
Developing our “Music skills” is the term I use broadly to mean learning the basics of music theory, practice and appreciation.
Everything we do in class contributes to the children’s development as mini-musicians, and as far as the children are concerned they are just learning new songs, playing games and having fun.
However, in order to add some structure and to provide a focus (both for me and the parents), I try to concentrate on a particular element of musicianship each week.
These elements are based on the national Guidelines for the Expressive Arts (Music), which are aimed at 5-14 year olds, but which I have adapted to suit my classes and the abilities of a pre-school child.
These are:
1. Investigating & Exploring Sound
• Listening to voices, instruments & everyday sounds.
• Contrasts & similarities between sounds and noises.
• Sound quality & timbre.
• Dynamics, silence & length of sound.
2. Sensing Music – Beat, Pulse & Speed
• Keeping the beat whilst music is played.
• Responding to the pulse of the music through movement
• Recognising changes in speed
• Sensing mood & expression.
3. Pitch
• Memorising melodies
• High / low contrast
• Pitch control (singing in tune)
• Repeating basic tunes.
• Notation
4. Basic Rhythm
• Keeping time
• Copying rhythmic patterns
• Playing patterns in a group
• Note lengths & notation.
The guidelines also identify using the voice, using instruments and listening & responding as important learning outcomes. You can rest assured that we do all these things every week at Hullabaloo as well!
As you can see, a lot of thought goes into what appears to be just a fun time with music!
The children will never know that they’re learning all of this great stuff, as mostly we’re just making a lot of noise!
Once the children are older, we do start to get a bit more technical, and I have written some modules that introduce some of the themes listed above, in a more structured way (see below). These are really aimed at the 3.5 year olds and above, and I'm careful to keep it short, to make sure we don't get information overload!
Animal Beats deals with note lengths (crotchets, minims, quavers etc) and I have designed some fun rhymes to help the children understand how the different notes "sound". Crotchet the Cat seems to be the favourite at the moment, but each of the notes has its own friendly animal to meet!
Sing a Rainbow introduces the idea of the Octave, and the eight notes included within. We look at notes that sit on lines and in spaces and they all have a different colour of the rainbow to learn.
Musical Terms is all about how we can play in different ways to make our music more interesting. Amongst others, we learn to play loudly and quietly (dynamics) and slowly and quickly (tempo), and we learn the correct musical terms (or words) for how we are playing too.
