Nursery World - Learning & Development: Music: Part 1

Early years settings uncertain of how to introduce music into everyday practice need simply find a real, live musician, as Linda Bance explains.

Hooray, it's music day,' shouts a little girl as she waits at the door of the playgroup with her mother. In the distance, a woman laden with bags and a violin case strapped to her back rests for a moment to shift her load and wave. 'Who is that?' asks the mother. 'It's Jane, our music lady,' says the child. 'She sings with us and plays her violin.'

Music-making in early childhood can be rewarding for practitioners and helpful for enhancing young children's cognitive and creative skills. It becomes important in its own right in its role of supporting children's development and well-being.

Dr Sue Hallam (2008) suggests that 'there is growing evidence that active involvement in music-making can have positive benefits for children's intellectual and social development', while Trevarthen and Malloch (1999) conclude that 'music enables belonging - it supports families and communities. It sharpens the mind and gives us pleasure of human company.'

CREATIVE DEVELOPMENT

Music-making is central to the creativity aspects of the EYFS and features in other areas of learning. It is highly recommended when supporting the Letters and Sounds phase one teaching programme and Every Child a Talker. The Early Years Foundation Stage states that as practitioners, we should be working towards:

Encouraging and helping children to listen to music

Widening children's experiences of music from different cultures and styles

Helping children develop a repertoire of songs and dances

Offering a wide range of sounds and musical instruments for children to explore

Allowing children to express them selves freely through music and dance

Providing a stimulus for imaginative composition.

It also recommends that we 'give opportunities for children to work alongside artists and other creative adults so that they can see at first hand different ways of expressing and communicating ideas to different response to media and materials' (EYFS, 2007).

By visiting a children's centre regularly over six weeks, a musician can support these activities by:

Introducing new sounds and musical ideas, offering a broad range of musical styles

Playing music to the children encouraging focus and concentration

Helping build the confidence of the practitioners when singing and delivering musical activities

Working with practitioners to build and use a well resourced music free-play area which would hold as much importance as the 'messy play' area

Encouraging and supporting children with their own musical adventures to help feed their imagination

Helping extend the day-to-day vocabulary with expressiveness that can add meaning across all six areas of the EYFS

Providing a relaxed meeting point for families to play music together

Developing their own skills in working with young children and their families.

In other words, a musician can offer exciting experiences for everyone working towards creating a musically rich environment that builds on young children's musicality.

As Susan Young (2009) notes, 'Children's musicality does not spring up from some inner, innate pure source. It is better thought of as a proclivity, a potential for music that locks on to every possible source for musical activity and interest around them, avidly and actively soaking it up - and doing this from birth onwards (even prenatally, as babies are listening while still in the womb). Children exploit everything they can; their voices, their bodies, the playthings around them, friends, family members, music they hear on TV, out shopping, at the temple, all present different opportunities for music. Their music arises from engaging with people and things around them, turning the possibilities they hold into active music that they then play around with and are inventive with.'

WHERE CAN WE FIND A MUSICIAN?

Finding a musician who has experience of working with very young children and their families will need careful consideration.

Perhaps a local authority music service can suggest a peripatetic music teacher who has experience with young children. Community Music associations, for example Music Leader or Sound Sense, can provide lists of musicians who are available for work (see More Information, p23).

HOW WILL WE KNOW THAT THEY ARE SUITABLE?

Once you have located a possible musician, it will be important to know what experience they have working with young children and their families. Ask them:

What activities they would like to do

What they know about the EYFS. Running through some of the practice guidance on areas of learning and development might help provide an understanding of expectations and effective practice

What they have learned or read about music in the early years. There is some very good reading material on this subject (see More Information)

If they work with a specific musical approach or method, for example, Dalcroze or Kodaly. Ask the musician to explain this approach. Does this suit you and your families' needs?

If they play without having to read music and if they can improvise. For example, could they play 'at the drop of a hat' some dancing music for children playing with streamers in the garden?

If they can sing. Have they got some songs in mind that will be relevant to the families in your centre?

If they are happy to work with other adults and families sharing and passing on their skills so others can continue the work.

HOW CAN WE MAKE THE MOST OF THEIR SKILLS?

Treat them as one of your team and encourage them to get to know everybody. They might:

Visit 'stay and plays' or referral groups and run a singing session, adding listening time, or play together with percussion instruments, encouraging the practitioners and families to join in too

Visit a nursery or playgroup, playing with the children, emphasising child-led activities by playing spontaneously inside or outside with the children and their musical instruments

Learn the songs and music games that are already happening and share new ideas together, which will help sustainability

Work with a group of childminders, helping them to develop ideas for making instruments and playing them

Play at the Saturday clubs

Help develop a music area in a setting where the musician and children could play freely

Be included in a new parent group to encourage singing and music making with tiny babies

Help organise and be central to a 'music week'. This could include inviting other musicians, using local talent from the community or asking local schools to participate in a short music-making event.

Whatever the situation, the musician will need time to get to know the children and families. They will need to 'tune in' to what is already happening. Sometimes just playing with the children in the sand or chatting to adults over coffee will begin to build the trust and respect needed for a good working relationship.

It is important to note that work with musicians is effective and sustainable when practitioners from the setting are present and joining in. This will ensure a good working relationship between all adults. It should not be seen as preparation time.

SESSION PLAN

Every situation will be different, but here is a framework that I find works for music sessions for parents with their children. This plan could be taken on by both practitioners and musician, with some dialogue with parents about the benefits of such activities:

Sing a welcome song together, leaving time for everybody to gather and settle. Encourage all the adults to join in - this is important for support and role modelling.

Sing some familiar action songs and finger rhymes, some of them having loads of repetition.

Have a listening time. Introduce a 'special puppet' to create a listening moment. Musician plays a short piece to everyone, encouraging children and adults to listen. Repeat if appropriate. Applause all round for both musician and listeners.

Play together. Give everyone the opportunity to take instruments from a basket and try them out, with musician and practitioners still supporting everybody. Encourage parents to play with their children. Play together, play with the musician. Play a stop and start. Celebrate the children's efforts.

Draw the session to a close by singing a song suggested by the children or families.

REFLECTION

After each session with your musician, ensure that there is time to reflect for adjustment and improvement. As Jane, the 'music lady' we met at the beginning, says, 'My role in the referral group was to empower the practitioners and parents in using music and singing as a way of communicating with children and motivating them into making music as a natural part of each day.

'When I started working I noticed one teenage mum preferred to sit at the back, away from the music, and just watch. Her two-year-old son would often just hover, halfway between a practitioner and his mum. I didn't force either parent or child to join us during our music-making.

'A few weeks later an outreach worker approached me with great excitement, saying she had just visited the same teenage mum and her son in their small flat. The mum had explained to her that since I had started with the group, her son had insisted every day that they both sat out on the balcony singing at the top of his voice "Roll a ball". And when she attempted to make her bed, he would initiate a rendition of "Ready and up and down". How fabulous for sustainability to actually empower the children themselves.'

This is a fine example of rewarding work, where musician, practitioners and parents worked in partnership to create a musically rich environment where music was 'caught, not taught'.

Linda Bance, MA Music Education, is a music educator specialising in creative music-making in early childhood. She is a member of MERYC UK (Music Educators and Researchers of Young Children). She can be contacted via www.playmusicplay.co.uk

PART 2

See Nursery World, 14 October

References and more information