Come Children, Sing! Online Music Classes are designed for young children. You can, however, easily adapt them for older children. CCS presents 3 MP3 files each week that include a Rhythm Activity, a Tonal Activity and a Song. CCS also provides a suggestion each week for “Playing Music”—playfully interacting with Rhythm and Tonal Activities.
CCS Rhythm and Tonal Activities are appropriate for all ages, and have been used effectively with children from birth through college students, and mixed groups at all levels. The key to successful implementation of CCS Rhythm and Tonal Activities with older children is in “Playing Music”—how you engage your students in playfully interacting with Rhythm and Tonal Activities. For example, toddlers would happily interact with a Rhythm Activity, pounding with little hammers. Eight year olds, on the other hand, could be insulted by the hammers but might be drawn in by doing the same thing with the eraser end of a pencil, or an imaginary basketball. The musical content is appropriate for all ages. It is how you engage your children with the musical content that should be tailored to the age.
CCS “Play Songs” are intended for young ages, though the words to many can easily be adapted for older children. It is not, however, through songs with words that children learn music. It is through Rhythm and Tonal Activities. Songs with words serve other purposes. Your favorite songs with children can be substituted for any CCS “Play Songs” that you feel are too young for your children, until they are ready for the more musically sophisticated CCS “Art Songs” and “Gem Songs.”
Your children have had a great deal more music experience than the youngest, but most are no more developed musically than the younger children. Your children may appear to be tuneful and rhythmic, but they have not had the kind of background that most develops rhythm and tonal skills, which are essential to all music learning. Most children who appear to sing songs tunefully and rhythmically are guided more by the words to the songs or the tuneful voice next to them than they are by their own inner sense of rhythm and tonal. CCS will help to fill the gaps in their music learning.
