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“You don’t need to be a Grade 8 pianist to support young children in their music”

When it comes to early years, music matters, and there are a host of resources that even novices can call upon to improve their practice, as Carol Reid explains…

Carol Reid
by Carol Reid
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We all know the importance of early intervention on shaping later outcomes in life. A child’s early years are a crucial period during which they start to acquire the social and emotional bedrock that will help them reach their full potential. And music is a vital part of this learning process.

“As well as having many development benefits, music is valuable in early childhood because of the enjoyment it provides for young children,” say Australian researchers Amanda Niland and Louie Suthers in ‘An Exploration of Young Children’s Engagement with Music Experiences‘. “Young children seem to find pleasure in music experience because of the interplay between aesthetic appreciation of the sounds of music, social interaction with significant adults and peers in music making, exploration of music through the use of their bodies and senses, and the opportunity for playful responses.”

No expertise? No problem!

Despite their benefits, the range and scope of musical activity on offer in early years settings can sometimes be restricted because of expectations of cost and time involved, or a perceived lack of expertise.

Musical engagement is often limited to the traditional nursery rhymes at circle time. There’s nothing wrong with that, but there are a number of easy measures you can take to improve and extend your musical offer, even if you don’t have a musical expert on your team. At Youth Music, we strongly believe that all children should have opportunities to actively engage with music right from birth, both at home and in education settings. Our work focuses particularly on those children facing difficulties in their lives, including poverty, disability and developmental delays. But the methods used in the early years projects we invest in can be beneficial for all young children and their families. Here are a few ideas and resources to get you started…

Listen & learn

The good news is that you don’t need to be a Grade 8 pianist to support young children in their music. It doesn’t matter if you’ve had no musical training, or even if you think you’re tone-deaf. The first barrier we all face is confidence, closely followed by a (perceived) lack of skills and knowledge. Yet we’re all inherently musical beings – cooing and changing pitch when communicating with babies is a natural form of musical communication.

Making and enjoying music is not just about learning an instrument; as humans we all have an innate musicality and there are many ways we can encourage this through musical activity.

How many of us listen to music to invoke a certain mood, or to motivate ourselves (for example, when exercising or getting through the stress of the morning commute)? Many homes, offices and cars are filled with the sound of music, yet it’s rarely played in early years settings. Youth Music supported Mac Birmingham to conduct a piece of action research about how recorded music – of all kinds of genres and styles – can be used in early years settings. Moving to music is another natural part of a child’s musicality, one that can help with mood, physical development and creative expression. So make time and space (literally!) for dancing to music in your everyday activities. Model and encourage movement to music, change the styles of music played and observe how children respond. You could also provide materials for mark-making so that children can draw or paint their responses.

Fun for families

Getting parents and carers involved is a great way of extending children’s learning beyond your setting. You could post resources on your website with activities for families to do together, thinking about the equipment they might already have at home – for example, pots and pans for percussion, a radio, or a smartphone. You could signpost them to musical apps – if you don’t know where to start, take a look at the selections highlighted here. .

Let parents know what music you’ve been listening to in your sessions, or invite families to mini performances. If you have a lot of children with English as an additional language, then hosting relaxed family sessions for parents to swap traditional lullabies and nursery rhymes can be a great way of promoting cross-cultural interaction. At the Music Moves project supported by Youth Music, staff bought a toy bear and a Flip video camera. Each week a different family was invited to take the musical bear and camera home to record their children’s singing and musical play, which was then shared with the rest of the group.

Supporting development

Music can be used to support many areas of the EYFS through songs, games, dances and extension activities. The Found Sound project, funded by Youth Music in 2013/14, investigated which musical activities were most successful in accelerating learning. The most effective ones were written up into a free toolkit structured around seven types of activity, each targeting various areas of the EYFS Framework. For each activity there’s a simple overview, as in the following example:

‘Hello everyone’ is a circle song suitable for up to 10 children, and is particularly useful at group time. The main benefits are connected to PSED, such as eye contact, sharing, turn-taking, confidence, choice-making and identity-building, but there are many more besides, including speech, language and physical development.

The toolkit includes downloadable songs, step-by-step guides, detailed information about achieving EYFS goals, and ideas for extending and developing the activity further – you can find it at flo-culture.com/project/targeted-musical-activities

Musical progression

Youth Music is currently investing in the development of a new resource for practitioners and parents called Sounds of Intent in the Early Years (SoI-EY). Based on research and consultation, it explains how children engage and develop musically, and provides ideas for musical activities. The premise is that there are three types of musical engagement:

1. How children listen and respond to sound and music 2. How children play with sound and music on their own 3. The interactions children have through music with others.

Six levels of musical development are illustrated with suggestions for activities at each level. This means you can observe a child’s level of musical development, then get ideas for what to do now and next.

If you observe one child copying another playing the egg shakers during music time for example,, you could then try encouraging children to copy the sounds you make (remembering to make lots of different sounds in lots of different ways). You could follow this by model copying with other adults in ‘call and response’ activities with suitable songs – such as ‘The Banana Boat Song (Day-o)’ – and encourage children to join in. Free materials are available from the resources section of Sounds of Intent in the Early Years website by registering for a free account; for more information about the project, contact Adam Ockelford at a.ockelford@roehampton.ac.uk

Carol Reid is programme director at the National Foundation for Youth Music – a national charity that invests in music-making projects aimed at improving personal, social and musical outcomes for children and young people; for more information, visit network.youthmusic.org.uk/funding

Main image courtesy of Gareth Widdowson

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