photo by quinn dombrowski ( ... · make sure your children have a rich musical life at school:...

■ Lighting a Musical Fire in Children by Renee Bock

■ Becoming the ‘Art Lady’ by Julie Rose

■ Sing, Move, Listen, Play: The Whole Package Makes It Work by Leilani Miranda

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THE ARTS 51 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2016 EXCHANGE

Beginnings Professional Development Workshop

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Lighting a Musical Fire in Childrenby Renee Bock

Developing a Music Mindset for Teaching

I was born with a head full of songs. My parents say I sang before I spoke. Is that unusual? Or are babies wired to make music from birth?

Early educators often feel ambivalent about making music with young children. We know it is good for them, but maybe we don’t like to sing. We know young children learn music more easily than adults, but we don’t quite know how to get started. Maybe we’re thinking, “Music teachers teach music. It’s not my responsibility.”

I’ve been singing with young children (birth to five years) for over ten years. I’ve worked with many teachers in the classroom, as a director, and as a builder of schools with music at the core of the curriculum.

Early childhood teachers often view infants as passive receivers of song. But if you take the time to watch and listen, you will see infants as active and engaged:

■ The beat exists within them.

■ They focus intensely on sound and how instruments work.

■ They look at the faces and hands of musicians.

Babies beam back with expressivity and curiosity at singing adults: kicking, smiling, and crawling towards the music. I was one of those kids. Luckily, my parents were set up to nurture the musical person I would become. But many children don’t hear music at home or in school. This ‘musical

desert’ has consequences for child development, and for cultivating a thinking and feeling child and a full human experience.

Helping teachers to sing and enjoy singing became a life crusade for me. I was motivated by one central idea: musical childhoods lead to musical lives. Educational psychologist Howard Gardner, an accomplished pianist, knew this when he posited music as one of the eight ‘intelligences.’ Music, math, language — they are all equally important, as you never know which one might become the most meaningful path to self-actualization.

How can we bring music into a child’s daily life? To start, we must move away from a performance model and see ourselves as interactive facilitators, teachers who draw out the music inside our children. The quality of the singing is

Renee believes that you can ‘save the world one guitar at a time’ and that music for infants and toddlers is the place to start. She entered the early childhood field with a mission to integrate music into the daily lives of children and has spent the last ten years as a teacher, director, and school builder putting her vision into action. After graduating from Bank Street College in 2007, she taught two-

to five-year-olds. She is the Chief Academic Officer for Explore+Discover and an early childhood education consultant. She is grateful to her three sons, Ariel (17), Raffi (15), and Shaya (13) for teaching her everything she knows about young children.

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irrelevant. (For the record, my father sang entirely out of tune.) To give children a musical start, we need to:

■ see music as central to learning.

■ realize that children are not judging us.

■ acknowledge the importance of social singing.

■ use instruments, books, and other props to have fun, and make music a satisfying experience.

I’ve spent over a decade building musical confidence in teachers and trying to inspire them to sing more, play more, and enjoy more. I hope this article helps you push through fear, take risks, and try something new. It takes a pioneering spirit to light a fire that sweeps music through an entire school and across the span of a child’s lifetime.

All Teachers Can Be Musical With Children

Sometimes what looks like a dead-end is really an open door. When I was a student teacher, the director told me I was doing too much music. “No director will ever hire you,” she said. Looking back, I couldn’t be more grateful, as I’ve spent my life disproving her point. Anyone can do it. You can, too. To start, even if you don’t play an instrument and have no access to lessons, here are some simple things you can do to make sure your children have a rich musical life at school:

Talent myth: You don’t have to have talent and you don’t need to play an instrument. Children don’t know or care whether you sound good. Think of yourself as a musical learner and have fun.

Circle time: Even if no teachers play an instrument, you still can have a musical program by doing everything listed here. When you gather, sing. When you have a work time, allow children to select music for listening, and to play instruments and dance. You control when and how loud.

Music is social and solitary: The togetherness of

singing is what’s important. Children together with children, teachers with teachers, parents with everyone. Communities within communities. Children are entitled to solitary experiences with music as well.

Photos below: Renee making music with babies at Explore+Discover Early Learning Center

Shared listening: Listening is social, too. Sometimes we sit still and listen, sometimes we dance. We introduce new music, things they won’t hear at home. Music controls mood and can be used to transition. You can sing along with music on a playing device if that makes you more comfortable.

Illustrated songbooks: Books with lyrics and pictures are a must. These are some of the first books children learn to ‘read,’ as the repetition and the melody help kids along. English language learners benefit from the strong visuals, predictability, and group dynamic. Make your own songbooks that match words with illustrations. Once the children claim these songs as their own, singing them socially or alone, you know the music has made its way into their hearts.

Musical materials: Instruments, puppets, and scarves develop various skills and self-expression. Infants need hands-on exploration and to be free to interrupt when you play instruments. Older children should have jam sessions. Use materials to teach concepts such as sequencing (plastic animals reflecting the order they appear in a song). Accessibility of materials is important. Instruments should be at eye level so children can make choices.

A springboard for curriculum: Remind yourself to consider the musical angle when expanding curriculum. Search for songs, send home links for parents to learn them, too.

Photographs by the author


Music touches emotions: Use music strategically and sensitively to shift mood, help children calm down, feel better and make transitions, particularly at the start of the school year.

Invite musical guests: Your community has musicians who would enjoy singing or playing with your kids and allowing them to explore instruments; skill level is irrelevant. Comfort with children’s curiosity is a must. The mechanics of instruments fascinate infants and toddlers. If you have an old violin at home that you don’t play, you can still bring it in for children to explore. The sounds they make will interest them intensely.

Idea to Try: In our center, we created a program called “Music Before Words” that highlights the musicality of children before they have spoken language. A saxophonist named Jonathan Ragonese visits children twice a month and brings along a musical ‘friend’ — French horn, tabla, violin, even a giant harp. The musicians improvise and children are invited to come close, press the keys, strum, bow. Some children approach, some stay away, others hold the hand of a teacher as they try something new. You will be amazed at the children’s interest, focus, and curiosity. You can institute a similar program in your center with local amateur musicians or parent musicians.

Directors Make Musical Change

When I moved from teaching to directing, I made music central to school life. When you control the budget, you make things happen! You structure professional development and select materials. You can hire teachers who come in with musical ability, or select ones you think you can nurture along. Here are some things we put in place:

Mentor/novice relationship: One guitar-playing teacher standing alone doesn’t infuse a school with musical life. Two together feed each other’s spirit and this can be transformative. Hiring at least one teacher who plays the

guitar can ignite the classroom by inspiring other teachers to learn. If you can hire a musical model for each classroom, even better.

Weekly sing-along: A weekly sing-along with parents helps build community. Teachers share the responsibility of introducing songs. Illustrated songbooks are a great prop. Parents bring instruments. Your special repertoire gives the school its unique identity. Sing-alongs in preschools are different from those in infant centers. Preschool teachers are freer to play instruments, as children usually need less immediate care. Infants and toddlers need more constant attention, particularly if walkers and non-walkers attend together. Make sure all children are visible. Close the door, block off areas, and put up gates. Try smaller groups and invite as many parents as possible. Be particularly protective of babies on their backs. At the start of the year a large group may not be possible, so take it slowly.

Professional development: Schools should pay for guitar lessons. You can also find lessons and songs on YouTube. It is best for teachers to learn in a group.

Partnerships: Our school partnered with a conservatory to host interns who later became consultants. The right partnership can inspire both parties.

Developmental perspective: Musical learning looks different for infants, toddlers, and preschoolers. If a child doesn’t show outward signs of interest, that doesn’t mean they aren’t engaged. Children observe, practice, and imitate. Music can be private and may end up being shared in the bathtub that night.

Respect the mood: Sometimes music is exactly what we need; other times it can be used inappropriately. If a student is comforted by music, that’s great. If a sound-sensitive child is distressed, be aware. Silence should also be a part of your day, as children benefit from quiet time to reflect.

Ideas to Try: At our center we hosted guitar teachers to work with our staff to learn chords and to build their repertoire. The Guitar Institute, led by Betsy Blachly and Elana Steltzer, leads five 1½ hour sessions that include time to learn chord structures, practice strumming, and simply sing together as a group. You can find a local guitar teacher who would be willing to use your space for free and advertise their class for paying customers, including your teachers. The important thing is that the center should pay for teachers to learn enough to get going with a few chords. Once you’ve got four chords, you can sing most children’s folk songs.

Betsy and Elana teaching Guitar Institute at Explore+Discover

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Making Memories

You might find that songs from childhood are recalled easily. Like the smell of your grandmother’s baking, or a cozy fireplace at home, musical ideas infuse and shape us at the core. A rich musical life in your school provides a storehouse of memories that students and parents will carry with them forever.

When we sing with children, we aren’t trying to discover the next Pavarotti. The goal is more wide ranging. Children enter the world with open brains and the capacity to learn in all domains. It is up to us to help them explore what attracts them, and expand skills where interests lead. When we open the door to music, some children will walk in and out, some will stay momentarily, others will linger, and some will put down elemental roots.

As children’s first teachers — and models for parents — we need to have our eye on the broad horizon of the possible, and ensure that music is one of the expressive languages our children speak every day. Music is an invitation to think and feel, to contemplate and express. Playing guitar and singing can spark a fire that burns through early childhood, middle school, and on into adulthood, as it did for me. School by school and teacher by teacher, we ignite children’s musical imaginations, planting seeds of possibility. This is what early childhood education is all about.

Resources

Some of my blogs on music you might find informative:

http://www.newyorkfamily.com/music-before-words/

http://www.newyorkfamily.com/the-magic-of-babies-inner-musical-universe/

http://wellroundedny.com/singing-with-babies/

Recordings

Pete Seeger’s “Birds, Beasts, Bugs and Fishes (Little and Big)”

Smithsonian Folkways Children’s Collection

Peggy and Mike Seeger’s “American Folk Songs for Children”

Peggy and Mike Seeger’s “Animal Folk Songs”

Books to Sing

“The Little White Duck” by Walt Whippo and Bernard Zaritsky

Listen to Burl Ives: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y57RWhz76y8

“The Carrot Seed” by Ruth Krauss

Listen to Ivan Ulz singing it: http://ivanulz.com/product/songs-from-the-old-school-cd/

“The Fox Went Out on A Chilly Night” by Peter Spiers

Listen to Pete Seeger singing it: www.youtube.com/watch?v=3798TcSq9vY

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My journey of joy with young children, exploring the arts and the wonders of the natural world, led me to a discovery about myself… that the journey was not just about what children were learning, but also about the lessons’ nature, the children and the teachers who support them, had in store for me.

The children at my granddaughter’s preschool had come to regard me as the ‘art lady.’ I realized how that honorary title boosted my confidence by acknowledging an inner voice that reminded me of my own creativity. After all, that was part of the reason I had been volunteering for the past two years, schlepping my stash of clay, paints, interesting tools, music, and books to explore with the children.

Undoubtedly, I wanted to spend as much time as possible with my four-year-old grandchild Avery, as well as the teachers I admired, but I also recognized that the time with children was a gift for me; an opportunity to fulfill something in me that needed fulfilling. I believe that if we deny ourselves the opportunity to embrace and immerse ourselves in those things we truly care about, something in us dies. Volunteering was a great opportunity to stay current with early childhood education, my grandchild, and my passion for the arts. I would be proud of my newly acclaimed title and celebrate our time exploring art together, despite the fact that I have never really considered myself an artist. I would now embrace the privilege of viewing this opportunity to work with some

very competent and capable young children, not through the lens of a former teacher or mother, but as Avery’s Nana… the art lady.

Setting the Stage

The philosophy at Avery’s school is that children need access to open-ended materials (loose parts) that invite them to generate their own creative ideas. The school believes that learning with nature in rich, well-designed settings helps children gain valuable skills across all learning domains. Picture a nature-rich outdoor play environment filled with colorful flowers that spark children’s imaginations; trees celebrated for their beauty and shade; spectacular butterflies; striped and dotted insects; and a variety of wildlife for children to safely explore. In addition to the proliferation of nature’s beauty, the space has also been designed to support whole-child learning, offering activity areas inviting experiences in art, music, large motor construction, gardening, building, sand and water play, dirt-digging, and climbing. Children are also actively engaged in caretaking tasks, knowing they have a responsibility to keep their classroom alive and healthy.

The Reflective Teacher

On my first day volunteering, I arrived to see Avery sitting on her teacher’s lap, plopped down on the grass in front of a cluster of sunflowers, deep in observation and conversation. It was a great image of a caring relationship between teacher and child, celebrating the beauty of nature together. At that moment I realized that experiences with ‘art’ can happen in a multitude of ways. Enjoyment modeled by teachers, particularly as they are exploring artistic experiences involving the natural world, has tremendous impact on what children believe and appreciate. Teacher Holly reinforces this idea:

Julie Rose is the Organizational Partners Education Director for Dimensions Educational Research Foundation. She works with partners interested in helping organizations support underserved communities to create Nature Explore Classrooms and professional development on the benefits of reconnecting children to the natural world. She has contributed to the research for Dimensions

Foundation as a teacher/co-researcher and to the development of resources including professional development workshops and publications on creating and sustaining natural outdoor environments. Her national and international conference presentations focusing on nature education include NAEYC, NAAEE, Connecting Children with Nature Action Forum, and the World Forum Foundation on Early Care.

Becoming the ‘Art Lady’by Julie Rose



call (800) 221-2864.

“This nature-rich environment is totally infused into all their senses. It becomes them. It’s like they are eating the dirt!” Children begin to understand that they are a part of the environment, too, and artistic experiences help them express loving appreciation and connection. As Holly said, “What children encounter each day in the natural world impacts what they are building, drawing, painting, singing, creating.”

The Power of Observation

Children need the opportunity to slow down and pay closer attention to the world around them. In fact, don’t we all? In his book Last Child in the Woods, Richard Louv coined the term “nature-deficit disorder” to describe the children of today, making the case that much beauty is overlooked because of the frantic pace of life. Avery’s teachers believe

A Holistic Approach to Arts Education

To fully support children’s creative expression, it can be helpful to divide the arts into categories: Creative Dramatics, Music, Purposeful Movement, and Visual Art. The process of experiencing and expressing or creating art is a way children can synthesize all that they are learning about the world, especially the natural world.

Creative Dramatics

Dramatic play can be interpreted and understood through the ways children engage in elaborate, imaginative play showing us what they are thinking about and how they are making sense of what is happening around them. Many adults today are concerned that children’s play is dominated by commercial media, wherein they mostly act out stories they have seen on television or in movies. When children use natural ‘loose parts’ such as stumps, sticks, and pinecones, that play often takes on new richness by requiring them to think of their own ideas and create their own props. Sometimes they dive into a delightful world of fantasy for a while and at other times we get to sample mud cakes or tour the Grand Canyon dug in the Sand Area.

Music and Movement

Nature, music, and movement work so well together. We know that all children, but especially those really kinesthetic ones, need to move to learn. Helping them learn what their bodies are capable of and how to regulate it is powerful. A natural outdoor classroom provides the space for children to engage in a wide variety of movement, even including real work such as digging holes and raking leaves. When musical instruments are available every day, children often tie their movements to music. They might hop as a friend pounds on a drum or float around like a butterfly, dancing scarves in hand, while others play a melodic metallophone.

Another unique opportunity the outdoors affords is practice in close listening. Children develop valuable musical understanding when they try to match notes played with their voices or experiment with pitch and volume. One child I observed in an outdoor classroom regularly watched and listened for birds and then tried call-and-response with them, hoping they enjoyed her songs as much as she enjoyed theirs.

Visual Arts

Consider how the aesthetics of environments support creativity. The beauty of nature inspires so much of the art we see in museums and elsewhere, so it shouldn’t surprise us that children respond in much the same way. Developmentally appropriate practice calls us to focus on the process of creation rather than the product, and outdoor art areas can truly inspire children’s processes. Processes might include stone mosaics, mud paintings on easels and sidewalks, and snow sculptures awaiting the warmth of sunshine to melt them into new shapes. The big, messy artistic work that can happen outdoors with materials such as these can ensure that art creation is a very sensory experience.

As Mary Lou Cook says, “Creativity is inventing, experimenting, growing, taking risks, breaking rules, making mistakes, and having fun.” Learning to interpret the world around us so that we can find our place in it and are able to contribute to it is what education is all about. Creativity is the way children express their uniqueness. When they act out stories, make music, paint or draw, they make visible what they know, what they feel, and who they are. It can be a way of communicating that is reliant on words so that we can learn from all of children’s “One Hundred Languages” as the Reggio Emilia approach describes it.



they can help children practice slowing down by giving them chances to closely observe and explore the wonders of nature together.

One day when I volunteered, the children had just finished reading a book called I Took a Walk by Henry Cole. It invites children to carefully hone their observation skills by looking for specific details found in the book. Because the children had been practicing close observation, I discovered that their creative artistic expression was greatly enhanced by first inviting them to take plenty of time to make careful observations of the natural world.

From the time Avery was an infant, she was exposed to art galleries and museums of natural history. One day when we were at a local art gallery Avery said, “That artist likes to paint nature. He likes trees just like you, Nana.” I couldn’t help but appreciate the fact that at a very young age Avery understood something about me and could relate that thought through her observation. “Sometimes artists like to paint pictures about the beauty they see in nature or things they care about to help tell their story,” I responded. Remembering that experience led me to intentionally pose this question to Avery’s three-, four-, and five-year-old classmates:

“Do you think artists get inspiration from nature?”

To support this provocation, I invited the children to explore pictures of famous artists’ works, including Georgia O’Keeffe’s One Hundred Flowers, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Falling Water, and Andy Goldsworthy’s A Collaboration with Nature. Along with these well-known pieces, I also included enlarged photos of monarch butterflies and a photo of one child’s pink dress with interesting, curvy lines that I had taken on an earlier visit. Enlarging the images allowed the

Questions We Considered in Our Reflective Practice:

• What are children trying to communicate about their understanding of the natural world through the creative process?

• How do the aesthetics of the environment support creativity?

• How do children reflect the beauty of nature in their artistic expressions?

• Could creating art inspired by the natural outdoor environment influence children’s attitudes about wanting to care for their space?

• How might children’s experiences practicing ‘looking closely’ impact their creative expression?

Inspiring Installation Artists

Andy Goldsworthy is a British sculptor, photographer and environmentalist producing site-specific sculpture and land art: www.ocula.com/Artists/AndyGoldsworthy

Patrick Dougherty bends sticks and twigs into whimsical, enveloping ‘stickworks’ that inspire delight and awe: stickwork.net

Michael Grab engages in a process that boils down to contemplative stone arrangement; involving patience, adaptation, slow breathing, steady hands, and a plethora of other practiced skills: gravityglue.com



children to see only a portion of the butterfly and dress in greater detail, introducing perspective.

As we explored together, I was reminded of this quote by Marcel Proust: “The real voyage of discovery is not in finding new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” As we looked at the monarch image, I asked open-ended questions to invite all responses… “What do you see?” “What do you know?” “What do you wonder?” “What do you like?” Responses were varied and led to discussions about the shapes, textures, colors, and patterns they were observing, along with speculation about the identity of the monarch butterfly that had been frequenting their outdoor garden. By posing these questions, I also discovered more about the children’s understanding of the world and what deeply interested

them. When we looked at the enlarged image of the pink dress, many children thought it was another Georgia O’Keeffe flower… but Violet, who had worn the dress, stated with great enthusiasm, “That’s my dress!” The children laughed as they discovered they had been tricked! What they thought was a flower was actually Violet’s pink dress. Another child said, “They made that dress look like flowers.”

We continued practicing ‘looking closely’ by making simple view finders out of 2” x 6” pieces of paper, carefully designed by each artist and then rolled up like a tube to be used as a tool for ‘seeing with new eyes.’ As children were intensely looking through their viewfinders to unveil new discoveries, teachers modeled their sense of wonder and delight in these sightings. When Avery discovered a large, bright green

Supporting Children’s Experiences with the Arts and Nature

The following four questions can be used to facilitate children’s deep engagement with artistic experiences inspired by nature. The questions help children attend to their perceptions and thoughts in ways that deepen their awareness and appreciation for all that touches their lives. These questions validate everyone’s thinking, and all responses are accepted and valued.

“What do you see?”

Always start with this question. It asks children to begin a conversation based on their own observations and helps them focus their awareness on the world around them. Observation can become a multi-sensory experience if children are encouraged to observe and then explore natural objects that allow them to use all of their senses.

“What do you know?”

This is a natural follow up to “What do you see?” as children have already begun to put the new object or experience into the context of things they have already encountered. John Dewey believed that we learn something from every experience we have, whether that experience is positive or negative, and that each experience influences future ones. Talking together to make meaning of a new experience in relation to what we already know helps the new experience become part of our long-term memory.

“What do you wonder?”

This may be the most important question to ask, because it models the positive benefits of divergent thinking. It is different than asking, “Do you have a question?” Asking the children what they ‘wonder’ encourages contemplation, curiosity, and dreaming about possibilities. There is an old saying that children enter school as question marks and leave as periods, but this does not have to be so. Young children are masters at asking questions, but statistics show a steady decrease in the number of times children raise their hands as they progress through the grade levels in school. Not only is it important to teach children that we value their answers, but above all, we must show them that we value their questions.

“What do you like?”

The last in the series of questions inspires children to share their own thoughts and feelings. Children are invited to make statements of interpretation and personal preference. This question can also provide teachers with an opportunity to talk to children about the value of having their own opinions (which may be different from someone else’s), as well as the importance of listening to different perspectives and respecting the views of others. It is a springboard for learning tolerance and appreciating diversity.


grasshopper, she described it as being ‘brilliant green.’ I was amazed at how this grasshopper, found in the garden area, was not at all frightened by us, but rather seemed equally curious. “Avery,” I questioned, “can you believe the way the grasshopper seems to be inviting us into his world?” With that, I left Avery to continue her discoveries and began walking through the outdoor classroom. I found that one group of children who had been closely (and safely) observing bees were building a ‘beehive’ structure out of fabric and large sticks. One boy, Kendall, yelled out, “We’re the bee guards and we’re protecting the queen bee from the bears. We’re using honey as a trap for the bears.” I wondered if Frank Lloyd Wright ever played at building beehives as a child, using those experiences as later inspiration in his work.

Another child, Charlotte, was holding a caterpillar in her hand. I heard her teacher suggest that a way of honoring the caterpillar, without handling it, would be to document it by painting its picture. Charlotte seemed very satisfied with that suggestion and began creating with the watercolors she found available to her. What a lovely way to respectfully help a child understand how fragile nature can be. The teacher never said, “We don’t pick up caterpillars,” she simply offered an idea of how to honor a living creature in an interesting way.

After quite a bit of time had passed, I was surprised to find that Avery was still observing the grasshopper. To assist in her close observation, Avery had gone to the greenhouse on her own initiative and grabbed a bughouse. She had found a small stick and carefully invited the grasshopper to enter the bug house. He did. He climbed up on the stick and seemed very happy to be entering his new home. As Avery sat in the corner of the art area with her new friend, I could hear her singing a song to this brilliant green creature.

The world seemed so full of promise at that very moment, in an environment that fully supported the authenticity of children’s play. All of the reflective questions we had asked

together would be answered as we all became witnesses to the way children’s learning was made visible through their creative expression. Soon the children were calm and ready to transition from the outdoors to the indoors. As I began to gather my things to leave and head for home, a little boy yelled, “Hey art lady, can you bring clay next time?”

Ideas to Spark Purposeful Movement and Body Awareness

• Local performances such as Cirque du Soleil often inspire our children to move in creative ways after they attend with their families.

• Local sporting events or those popular on television such as the Olympics. During the last winter Olympics I saw children building hockey rinks in the snow and performing medal ceremonies on our outdoor stage.

• Breath awareness and simple yoga practices encourage mindfulness and self-regulation. Imaginazium.com is a source for children’s yoga pose image cards.



For young children, music is a universal magnet, and all of life is a celebration filled with new and exciting people, places, things, and events. Combine the fascination with the ordinary and children’s innate attraction to all things musical, and you have an endless resource for those working with the young.

Music has the potential to change the course of a child’s life developmentally, neurologically, psychologically, emotionally, and socially. What a joyful work to be about! It is a win-win endeavor for both the adult and child. It ensures a joyful atmosphere as part of the ‘doing’ of learning in your classroom setting, which will foster on-going thinking and learning.

The whole child experiences music. Singing, moving, listening, responding with an object, all come with the package. For a music session then to have its fullest impact on children, the session should include all four fundamental elements: sing, move, listen, and play. Combining these with everyday topics, let’s look at the effect of each of these elements, in order to see their influence on children’s holistic development.

Sing

To sing is to be human! The warmth and vibrations of your throat and chest during live singing are felt by the child. We can also expose children to recordings of singing. They need both. With the combination of live and recorded singing, children will hear a vast repertoire and be exposed to a variety of male and female voices.

For children’s songs and recordings, we should choose carefully, just as when we’re selecting any good literature. It is best to avoid ‘top 40’ popular songs. The best types of songs are folk songs, and other songs recorded specifically for children. These will have concrete, real life themes and will delight in the everyday and innocent topics that are part of children’s experiences and are within their realm of awareness.

Children’s song literature is abundantly filled with animal theme choices. Songs about birds, dogs and cats, horses, mice, or a farm full of animals awaken the child’s imagination and captures their attention in the moment. There is a reason “Old McDonald Had a Farm” is such a hit with any group of children. Other traditional classics that are hits such as “Twinkle, Twinkle” and “The Wheels On the Bus” also have tangible objects as their topic.

Move

To be alive is to move. It is a natural state of being for the body from birth. The newborn typically flails arms and legs freely and with joyful abandon. Also from birth, children experience locomotor movement of the body through space in the arms of trusted adults. Before too long, that same baby begins to move around independently and develops an array of motor skills as he explores the surroundings.

In a music setting, the teacher can plan a variety of movement activities. Each type of movement activity can easily be adapted for the setting/group size and can evolve to support different developmental stages.

Directed activities such as start-and-stop games. My favorite is “Walk and Stop.” The very young can experience

Sing, Move, Listen, Play:The Whole Package Makes It Work

by Leilani Miranda

Leilani Miranda BM, MM, has been involved in music education for over 40 years, specializing in early childhood music and movement for the last 32 years. Ms. Miranda received a Bachelor of Music from Oklahoma City University and a Master of Music from the University of Houston and is certified Level III as an Early Childhood Music and Movement Specialist by the Early Childhood Music and Movement

Association, of which she is a past President and an honorary lifetime member. Ms. Miranda has received intensive and ongoing training under the celebrated authors Lorna Heyge and Audrey Sillick, as well as numerous other specialists in the early childhood and music education fields. A national teacher trainer in early childhood music and movement, Ms. Miranda teaches at various seminars, institutes, colleges, and universities in North America. From 2012 to 2015, Ms. Miranda has been the host and collaborator for the Houston Symphony Scout concerts presented to audiences of three- and four-year-olds. Since 1984, Ms. Miranda has had an active studio program in Houston, Texas, where she works with 80+ families and their young children. Her studio and work have been featured on the local PBS station in Houston.

To download three of the author’s favorite songs, visit: www.ChildCareExchange.com/issue



call (800) 221-2864.


stopping in the arms of their adults. Preschool-age and up can practice learning to inhibit or stop.

Choreographed circle games like “Ring Around the Rosie.” These activities encourage cooperation and social graces such as hand holding, moving smoothly with the group, and falling and rising with grace.

Stationary, seated games including:

■ Body awareness. The rhythmic chant “I’ve Got the Rhythm” quickly becomes a favorite.

■ Fine motor gestures with classic song favorites such as “Twinkle, Twinkle.”

Communication skills and emotional expression through gestures, facial expressions, and body language. The traditional “If You’re Happy and You Know It” clap your hands provides a fun way to practice emotions, such as angry (stomp your feet) or scared (hide your face).

Free movement and dancing allow children to experiment with moving in space and among others gracefully. It can include spinning and moving in different directions (forward and backward), smooth or bouncy, fast and slow. The directional variety of the head movements stimulates the inner ear. This awakens listening skills. The variety of peripheral visual stimulation enhances laterality, the ability to track visually left-to-right and right-to-left, which is a key to reading readiness. Choose instrumental music without words from many genres: classical, jazz, and swing, to name a few.

The excitement and challenge of imagined movements invite the child to move out of a comfort zone and expand/refine the vocabulary of movement. The child will also be encouraged to move her head down and up, literally increasing the blood flow to the brain as well as stimulating the inner ear. This will help the child to calm and increase ability to focus. One of my favorites, “Willum” can incorporate acting out a variety of everyday tasks.

Listen

The ear has dual functions: movement and hearing, and these are intertwined. Movement fosters good listening (stimulation of the inner ear) and good listening fosters balance, body control, and grace.

A broad vocabulary of movement activities will allow the ear to record concepts of space, time, and overall proprioception for the whole body. When the inner ear and the body’s muscles and joints have had sufficient stimulation with

a variety of movement activities, then the child is able to register and process his position in space and then modulate his responses appropriately. Movement and listening work hand in hand to enhance socialization and academic learning. When the child is able to regulate his body and come to attentiveness and focus, then following directions and absorbing language will follow.

Focused listening can be a specific activity involving short examples of specific instruments or everyday sounds. Always tell the children what they are going to hear. This is NOT a guessing game. Attempting to imitate the sound vocally after listening adds to the intensity of the listening.

Play/Apparatus

Having concrete objects to handle and manipulate is often a child’s favorite part of the music experience. Simply tapping sticks together is a visceral early delight that is never really outgrown. The feeling of the beat extended into an object is transferred back through the body in the skeleton and reinforces its presence. The feeling of the steady beat is registered in and helps regulate the frontal lobe of the child’s brain. A well-developed frontal lobe is the source of the child’s self-control and ability to plan the next action. An internalized steady beat is also a pre-reading skill, which leads to steady reading out loud.

Controlling the use of the instrument can be encouraged by the teacher’s model and/or verbal suggestions via storytelling. Imagining and making sounds like a tiny little mouse or being near a sleeping baby will evoke a different response from the suggestion to imagine a large dinosaur or a big truck. The control to use the instrument lightly or loudly requires the same control needed to interpret social settings or emotions and respond appropriately. Controlling the use of the instruments is a very concrete way to learn to follow directions in a way that is fun for the child.

Appropriate instruments for the very young include short, thick sticks (the dimensions are important for safety: 7 inches long, nominal ½ inch diameter), rattles, jingles (caution with children still prone to mouthing everything), and hand drums.

In addition to instruments, other simple objects such as scarves or hoops broaden and expand the repertoire of responsive and expressive whole body movement for children. Children will forget themselves when dancing with a scarf and this will give their body a broader experience with movement. The greater the variety of movement, the greater the benefit to the whole child.


Hoops also provide opportunities for the children to feel their bodies in a confined/defined space. This builds their awareness of the body in space in general and will help with self-control when in a group of classmates. Activities with hoops are a fun way to practice following directions as part of a game (jump in, jump out), or imitating modeling by the teacher while moving to music.

Resources

Early Childhood Music and Movement Association (ECMMA). www.ecmma.org

Musikgarten/Music Matters, Inc. www.musikgarten.org

Coulter, D. J., EdD (1995). Music and the making of mind. Early Childhood Connections: Journal of Music- and Movement-based Learning, 1(1).

Heyge, L., PhD. (2002). The well-prepared beginner: Prepared in body, mind, spirit, and family. Early Childhood Connections: Journal of Music- and Movement-based Learning, 8(1).

Healy, J. M., PhD. (1994). Your child’s growing mind. New York: Doubleday Books.

Nash, G. C. (1995). The ear: Primary organ in child development, with movement, music, and language. Early Childhood Connections: Journal of Music- and Movement-based Learning, 1(1-2).

Sillick, A. (1999). Children at home in the world: A sense of connection. Early Childhood Connections: Journal of Music- and Movement-based Learning, 5(3).

Putting it All Together

Sing, Move, Listen, Play: it works best as a package. Each element increases the impact of the other. Music can have a holistic impact if it is utilized as a complete package.

The following describes one of my favorite recent memories. It was the whole package that made this a successful music time.

A lively group of four-year-olds are in the room for music time. They are full of boundless energy. I think about the several goals I have in mind for that day (sing, move, listen play) and quickly conclude that I had best meet these children where they are, if my goals for them are going to be realized! So, I shift from my plan for starting with a stationary hello song and fine motor activities, and go directly to a full locomotor song with starts and stops. I join in with their energy and begin to run in a circle, gathering them up with my gestures to all move the same direction.

I begin singing, “Oh well, you run and you run and you run and you stop!” The song stops, I stop, and most the children stop…more or less! I model and tell them to change direction and we all run, while I repeat singing the same verse with the same stop at the end. This time many more of the children stop quickly. We again change direction and by the third time they all stop. All of this is without any extra verbal commands. The music gives the command. I then changed to jumping. All stop at end of verse. Then we spin, then kick, then punch, then bow (heads all the way down to the feet and back up) several times with my song.

I then invited them to come sit with me and they all gathered quietly and we proceeded with our quiet hello song and other various activities I had planned for that day, which included focused listening, free dancing, acting out a story about a cat and mouse, playing drums and ending with a circle game song. I could have orchestrated a very unpleasant experience for the children and myself, complete with lots of correcting and having children who couldn’t cooperate sit aside. Instead, with a change of course, this day turned into a pleasant experience that included the whole package: singing, dancing, listening and playing instruments. In the end, the children left feeling happy and satisfied, and, at least temporarily (!) calmed.

Sing, Move, Listen, Play:The Whole Package Makes It Work

by Leilani Miranda

© Musikgarten/Music Matters, Inc. Used with Permission, www.musikgarten.org

Leilani shares three of her favorite songs for children:

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