Teaching early childhood music offers the opportunity to witness the wonder of the musical mind in its purest form, and informs music teaching in all classroom, choral, instrumental, and private contexts of music education. It lays bare the basic needs of music learning at all ages, suggesting that  music teaching and learning function as an organic whole, with students’ musical needs driving the choice of music content, curriculum materials that feed those needs, and classroom techniques that sustain energy for all ages to make exciting music.

Lesson planning becomes the process of pulling together all dimensions to create the most effective and musical blueprints for each class, whatever the age, to be edited following the class with students, making the next session even more effective.  Teaching music requires ongoing dialogue between your increasing awareness of the process of music learning and your students’ demonstration of that process. Each informs the other and leads to adjusting content, ordering of activities, energy management, and techniques.

Every new insight you unveil in the process of lesson planning opens your eyes and ears in the classroom to what children's artistry has to teach, and every new insight you garner from the classroom propels lesson planning, further enabling you to empower children with their own artistry. Children’s artistry needs curriculum materials that meet musical needs, with Art Songs that feed the soul of the young artist. It needs an environment bubbling with energy that sparks the mind, body and soul to engage with and become the music.

The more you witness over time the process of music learning with multiple classes at the same level, and multiple levels of the same classes, the more you will discover the sameness of the process of music learning across ages and the likeness of the ongoing process across stages. The more you shape energy in the classroom, the more you will find the value of managing energy in all contexts of music education, the more you will sense the undulation of energy in the classroom, and the more you will design lesson plans that propel energy that transforms into musical energy. The more you tune in to young children’s deer-in-the-headlights stares, their musically brilliant responses at every step of the way, and their movement that is often more musical than our own, the more you will will develop an internal awareness of whether or not you are reaching the musical mind, and know how to interpret its response.

A fine teacher of early childhood music believes in the artistry of young children and is determined to uncover it in the classroom, informed by an understanding of the process of music learning, armed with appropriate curriculum materials, and attuned to the need for effective techniques that serve music learning and energy management. Teaching early childhood music requires that the teacher become an artist as a musician, an artist in creating a “seamless children’s play” that meets the musical needs of children at every age and stage, and an artist in sculpting energy in the classroom, making every music class a joyous and highly musical experience.

The art of teaching early childhood music reveals a transparency of the musical mind that implores the teacher to enter the world of sheer musicality and engage with little artists in the art itself. A master teacher of early childhood music becomes the musical equivalent of the “horse whisperer”—one who communicates directly with the musical mind, unleashing children’s artistry.