Q: How long do I have to…………….?
A: A new teacher of early childhood music is often inclined to implement too much too soon. A class of beginners, whatever the age, needs immersion in the various meters and tonalities at the most basic level for a good long while before moving on. As a new teacher of early childhood music you also need immersion in meters, tonalities, lesson planning, energy management, songs, and techniques. You need time to explore curriculum materials in the classroom, the energy of songs, the energy of activities, and the ordering of activities. The goal is not getting to advanced activities that first term, but rather, becoming a better teacher of beginners. Give yourself time to babble in the classroom, and enjoy the journey with beginners, as a beginner yourself.
Q: Is the practice of rotating meters and rotating tonalities across weeks, while providing contrasting meters and tonalities within each class, recommended for lesson planning at all levels?
A: Yes. By rotating meters and rotating tonalities across weeks, and by providing contrasting meters and contrasting tonalities within each class, you are keeping all meters and tonalities alive in children’s audiation, while stimulating the musical mind to better understand what something is by hearing what it is not. The contrast between meters or between tonalities better establishes the uniqueness of each meter or tonality in audiation.
Q: How can I present a new meter or tonality each week when there are so many rhythm and tonal slots to fill each week?
A. Choose one slot in your lesson plan as the “feature” meter and one as the “feature” tonality, rotating meters and tonalities in that slot across weeks, while filling in the other slots in the class with contrasting meters and tonalities, making sure you include the meter and tonality that was “featured” the week before. Various meters and tonalities are then included each week, but deliberately “featuring” one each week and revisiting that one the next week assures the deliberate and regular presence of each of the various meters and tonalities in the ongoing “sound environment,” keeping all alive in audiation, while assorted meters and tonalities fill out the contrast,
Q: How long should I use the same Rhythm Chants, Tonality Songs, rhythm patterns and tonal segments through immersion and interactivity?
A: When in doubt, ask yourself the same question about learning language—“How long should I use the same vocabulary with little children before they learn to speak?” We speak to children as infants, increasing vocabulary as they grow, yet meeting them at their own level and singling out words like book, dog, and chair repeatedly until children start to deliver the words on their own. We move forward with them as they acquire a few words, giving them words to say in context like “Tell Grammy thank you.” Children are most always in a rich language learning environment. We provide the primary rich music learning environment in the young child’s life and should choose content accordingly.
Q: How many verses of a meter chant, tonality song, Art Song or Gem Song should I include?
A: Certainly no less than four, and preferably at least 6 or 8. You can always stop if you have lost the children, but more likely, persisting with the musical narrative will bring a group from scattered energy to focused energy. The longer you carry on the musical narrative, the more children will tune in. The children may surprise you with how long they will hold their intense focus.
Q: What might be some of the unique challenges of offering classes in a preschool or daycare setting?
A: Teaching classes in a preschool will likely require different class sizes than those recommended in this course, but the preschool setting generally brings children accustomed to “classroom behavior,” so that sharing, responding one-on-one, and going along with the program are built in. The preschool setting, however, does present another factor that can be a challenge—the children know each other and already function as a community. This can work against you as well as for you, as beginners not yet tuned into rhythm and melody might act out as they do in preschool, influencing each other’s behavior and distracting each other’s musical mind. The best antidote to this situation is a well-designed lesson plan that captures the musical mind of each child, sculpting energy and keeping it moving from one exciting aural toy to another, without the distraction of props. Teacher aides can also work against you as well as for you, as you are trying to capture the musical minds of the children and they are trying to help by using techniques that get in the way—perhaps reprimanding individual children, interrupting the musical mind. Priming teacher aides to communicate only non-verbally can be helpful (as well as “sing along, move along, play along, go along.”) Teacher aides and children being a functioning community can also work for or against you in the daycare setting, which may also present the challenge of children coming and going on a day to day basis, offering a varying mix of children and class size every time you see them. Lesson planning to accommodate various levels may be necessary.
Q: How do you suggest that I handle visiting children in an already established class?
A: A class of beginners can easily absorb the occasional visiting cousin or neighbor child, which might bring in a new student. The advanced classes engaged in interactivity, however, are better served with the visiting child sitting out and watching. Children without a background in meters and tonalities view props as toys rather than musical instruments, and engage with them without the musicality that is expected of the class, defeating the very purpose of the props. Interestingly, the mom or dad babysitting for a friend’s child better appreciates how far their own child has come when they realize that the friend’s child is not ready for the musical content of the class.
Q: How long do you suggest that I wait before using a favorite prop, activity, or Play Song another time?
A: Three to four weeks is a good rule of thumb, as children are then excited to return to the favorite activity, but your own creativity may initiate new applications in the interim. For example, you could find a way to use hoops differently every week. Having several props/activities that can be used for the same purpose at a particular point in the class, and several Play Songs of a particular energy that can be alternated, assures the joy of freshness each week while providing for both music learning and energy management.
Q: Don’t the lesson plans presented for beginning groups include too many Play Songs?
A: The musically rich lesson plans are peppered with Play Songs, yet include 6 sets of Rhythm and Tonal Activities in addition to the Play Songs. In beginning classes, Play Songs serve as props, as energy regulators, as ways to stimulate joyous parent/child interaction with music. Multiple Play Songs with beginners serve well as long as there are multiple Rhythm and Tonal Activities.
Q: How can I keep from running out of ideas with movement?
A: Get your thinking mind out of the way and let the music move your body. All music flows, so flowing movement is appropriate with every kind of music. Subtle movement with the meter can underlie flowing movement. Moving the energy of the line offers a different kind of movement with every song. Articulating the rhythm of the words with arms and hands becomes unique to each song. The imposition of tapping on knees, head, and other “ideas” of the thinking mind engage the thinking mind rather than the musical mind. Music is movement and the musical mind knows how to engage with music through the body so that children will do the same.
Q: Is there a reason why you do not include shakers among the extensive list of Activities Galore?
A: Yes. Shakers, like baby rattles, are more about making noise than about being musical. The most effective props for rhythm can be used to easily reflect beat and relative weight on macro and micro beats, even through babble with the prop. The most effective props for tonal can be used to reflect sustained tone or stimulate resting tone or tonal dialogue response. Shakers do neither.
Q: Can I use the cute music activity I picked up in a teacher’s workshop?
A: Does it serve your musical goals? Can you implement the activity without verbalization? Do the techniques serve energy management? Will including the activity sustain the balance of your lesson plan? If you can answer yes to all of these questions, then give it a try. If not, then perhaps there is a way you could take whatever you found “cute,” and incorporate it in another way—like using the song as a Play Song, or using the techniques or props with Rhythm or tonal Activities. If you are dying to try the activity with your children just as you experienced it, use it at the end of your lesson plan and see what happens. See how it affects energy management, and strategize how you might effectively include it (or exclude it) in a future lesson plan. Many “cute” music activities are presented at teachers’ workshops, some of which may be very attractive. Too many of these, however, are very wordy, carried by a story rather than musical narrative, or require instructing children verbally, or focus on the words to the songs, or present a song that musically doesn’t merit the time the activity takes. The discriminating teacher looks beyond cute to musicality, and won’t be fooled even by a compelling story presented with a compelling tonality in the background or between segments of the story, knowing that the story speaks to the thinking mind and distracts the narrative of the musical mind.
Q: Does using the same techniques repeatedly get old with the children?
A: Humdrum techniques, like humdrum routines, will get old to you as well as to the children. You can, however, make every activity in every class fresh by your choice of content, ordering, and techniques. A particularly effective technique can even become an anchor, used every week. For example, in advanced classes of 2nd, 3rd, and 4th year students, (not appropriate for beginners), your instructor took the children to a corner of the room for a traditional folk song about midway through the class, deliberately breaking the intensity of music learning activities. Each week the folk song changed, but the technique, which was used originally to draw two year olds away from their parent, encouraging a bit more musical independence, was to pretend to try to beat the children to the corner. Of course, exaggerated teacher movement and toddling children for the short distance to the corner did not create a safety issue. It did, however, create a most delightful transition to the laid back activity, as every week the teacher tried to beat the children to the corner. Lo and behold, every week they beat her. The transition included words like, “I know I’m going to beat them this week,” which efficiently moved the children to the different setting for the contrasting activity. The children were so delighted by the technique that it carried through numerous groups of children’s second year, third year, and fourth year, remaining delightful through all, and carving a place for children’s folk song repertoire. Perhaps once, in their fourth year, the teacher beat the children to the corner.
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