Archived “manuscripts” of archived work on the CCS Curriculum are posted here. Only formatting has been changed to accommodate web posting, and an occasional note has been added for clarification for today’s readers. The Curriculum creates a music learning parallel to the playful environment in which children learn language. It is a curriculum with hundreds of playful activities for the classroom, plus guidance for content, sequence, and skill levels.
Materials posted here include: 1) A series of sequences—rhythm and tonal content sequences, skill level sequences, skill/activity sequences; 2) A series of indexes that lists all activities by prop, with reference to skill levels, and a full database with more than 500 activities; 3) Descriptions of the various types of activities, 4) Guidelines for lesson planning, and 5) A storehouse of activities—40 pages of classroom activities, grouped primarily by prop.
The CCS Curriculum grew out of classes at the Come Children Sing Institute. Activities developed for preschool classes can be adapted for older children. Content sequence and skill levels guide the teacher with lesson planning. A teacher who understands the musical needs of the students can create appropriate lesson plans based on skill and content sequences and available equipment in the classroom.
The “manuscript” of the CCS Curriculum is not only unfinished, it has been through a couple of incarnations over a number of years from about 1987 through 1997. Research and growth at the Come Children Sing Institute since that time is not duly represented in the early writing, yet the early experience is the foundation for all, including the subsequent online curriculum. New postings will be added as they are reformatted from earlier editions, including more on Lesson Planning. Sequences were done after much of the original writing, so they are most representative of the thinking through 1997. Music reading and writing were represented in full, but will not be presented online at this time.
Working with “manuscripts,” the unfinished and incomplete writing of a trusted educator, offers the student of music learning both the benefits and challenges of library research. It allows the student of music learning to gain new insights from earlier writing and witness ongoing discoveries of the educator that ultimately come together into a more cohesive whole. The unfinished early writing requires that the student of music learning connect the dots—make connections about the relationships between the various segments, the classroom, the online program, and one’s own experience—a process that can generate great understanding about music learning. It can, however, be inconvenient, particularly in the online environment, where related ideas are generally a click away.
This is not a “cookbook.” Materials posted here are “manuscript,” not “script.” These are not formulas to take into the classroom. The experience with these materials can stimulate much greater understanding of the process of music learning. The storehouse of activities will not only provide for the classroom, but trigger the imagination of the teacher to create many more playful activities. Music learning is a natural process that deserves the kind of ongoing, playful environment that accompanies learning language, informed by an understanding of the process of music learning.
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