Nursery World - EYFS Activities - Music to their ears

A ‘Dogs, Bones and Dancing’ project at two settings in Cumbria began with children exploring musical instruments, which led to a variety of creative activities, discovers Annette Rawstrone

The importance of children using music as a way to express their ideas and interpret and understand the world is at the heart of a two-year project that saw children enthusiastically develop and build on their interests in instruments, dance and performance.

Brantfield Nursery School and St Thomas’s C.E. Primary School (see box), both based in Kendal, Cumbria, were involved in the project – which became known as ‘Dogs, Bones and Dancing’ – led by Sightlines Initiative, an organisation that inspires children to learn through enquiry, expression, imagination and curiosity.

‘We felt music was important to explore because musicality is often forgotten as a language of expression. In early years centres and schools, we recognise drawing, language, painting and building as ways of expressing yourself, but music is often reduced to a box of instruments on the top shelf,’ explains project author and mentor Robin Duckett.

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