This current 6-part series of early years music articles features a new early years music activity each month from a number of arts activities trialled for 1 and 2-year-old children, along with musical suggestions, with recordings on You Tube. A Finnish study, (Lehikoinen, 2023) considered 6 different ways to explore creativity with 1 and 2 …
Read more ““Thank You For The Music”: Musical Drawing In The Early Years”
What are the essential “ingredients” of an early childhood music session? As an early years music specialist with a particular interest in movement in learning music, I love the concept of SPACE, so used it as an acronym for the skills that develop in music sessions. One of my first articles looked at the life …
Ask a teenager what they do in their spare time, and they will often say, “listen to music”. Ask an adult what they do to relax, and they will often say, “listen to music”. Music is so pervasive that it is hard to think of any situation where you would not come across it. From …
Read more “Early Years Music Education Training: Do We Need It? Part 1”
Maths can be tricky in the early years because working with numbers is such a conceptual topic – there is no object that is a “four”, for example. You cannot pick up a “four”. You cannot smell a “four”. And the younger the child, the more literal they are. However, once children have been introduced …
Read more “Meeting Maths Early Learning Goals with Musical Songs and Games “
Why has music survived as long as it has? For the longest time, science has asked this question – why is music still a part of our lives today? Since the beginning of time, people have recorded their everyday activities: from the Egyptian hieroglyphics to writings on parchments and scrolls. There is evidence that people …
