“Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” You have witnessed theory in practice with your own children in the 10 week online course. This 5-hour workshop provides the tools so that you can independently create ongoing lessons for your children that are founded in sound principles of theory and practice, and provide for ongoing music learning and the development of children’s artistry. As you move into creating your own lessons based on the principles addressed in this workshop, searching and re-searching the process of music learning in your own classroom, give your fishing expedition the time it needs, and remember the importance of repetition.
Children grow musically through an ongoing “sound environment,” with extensive immersion in the various tonalities and meters, and follow-up interactivity through Rhythm Dialogue, Resting Tone Activities, Macro/Micro Beat Activities, and Tonal Dialogue, with increasing content difficulty throughout all music instruction. At least 12-16 weeks at the foundational level is needed with children you meet once a week before moving them on to rhythm and tonal syllables. Even then, content of greater difficulty is introduced through sound rather than through syllables. This is not to say that children you meet twice each week should go twice as fast. Music learning is a process and it takes time. Children learning a new language will learn more quickly when immersed in the language twice rather than once a week, but competence in a new language experienced just a couple of hours each week is slow to develop.
One term might provide the foundation for music learning, but the process of immersion and interactivity in various tonalities and meters with increasing content difficulty is a lifetime process. No matter what new challenges lie ahead when students are ready for rhythm and tonal syllables and music reading, they will always be taking in new content at the foundational level of music learning, and will always need repetition and reinforcement at that level.
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