Importance of music in our lives
Music is a very important sphere of our life, it can help us understand some implicit meanings of the movie scenes, of ballet or theatre performance; it is aimed at making our mood better, coping with the stress and depression, sleeping more soundly. Children that attend early childhood classroom should make the acquaintance of music itself, music levels, tendencies, beat and rhythm; music can actually be useful in learning poems, rules of behavior and of different games and dances.
The teacher should explain the children difference between music and noise, because both are made of sounds; the music can be distinguished from noise by several simple features, suchlike intention, rhythm, and organization (Turner).
As children are not able to distinguish one style of music from another, they are to “learn traits of the style of their culture, just as they learn the grammar and syntax of their native tongue” (Jones, 2005).
The chosen material must serve a kind of inspiration
The chosen material must serve a kind of inspiration, so that you were inspired and had enough energy to inspire children. It would be interesting for children to take part in activities of different kinds: to sing, to dance, to play active games. By include different kinds of activities, such as a fun dance, an opening song, stories, good poetry, and activities making children move the teacher can achieve a greater success than giving them instructions in the form of a lecture (Bright).
Little children are all very clumsy at the beginning, but the more they learn about the rules of behavior, general manners, such as being kind and attentive to each other, keeping one safe with help of prohibition, helping the people around and keeping their feelings safe with help of expressions of politeness. As the children are not aware of the general rules of behavior, we should help them; give them necessary instructions in order to direct their actions.
Music helps children to learn the world around us
Music helps children to learn the world around us. We can apply the new method of environmental cognition, this would be a musical method, by means of which different complicated things would seem simpler to children. Musical method includes such means as body percussion; steady beat which helps to learn poems and rules of behavior; listening which presupposes quiet seating and attentive listening of a piece of music; different kinds and levels of movement starting with the simplest moves first individually, then with a partner and after that in a large group.
There exist four levels of body percussion, they are clapping, snapping, stamping, and patting. The body percussion not only helps to learn poems, songs and some rules, but helps to develop the coordination of movements. Body percussion helps the teacher to coordinate children; to control their actions by awaking interest in them towards games, songs, dances. The teacher should show the children the difference between diverse expressions of sounds that we produce: shouting, whispering, speaking, and singing; guarantee that any time children sing with the teacher, they do it in full accordance with singing rules (Bright).
The children should learn to recognize different sounds and to differentiate them from the noise, with the help of study of different sounds produced by different instruments. Mary and Mick Stratton in their article “If You Can Talk, You Can Sing” emphasize the importance of teaching music; as being aware of the beat, the rhythm, intonation, by learning this notions on the examples of pieces of music and engaging different instruments and movements, children become more experienced and proficient. Thus, if children learn to act, sing, dance together, it enhances mutual cooperation, and helps children to understand better the rules of behavior, to respect each other and to fell comfortably within the society.
The way to foster creativity in young children
There are different ways to foster creativity in young children. They include different approaches to the problem of making children more self-reliant, more creative, and more interested in the process of receiving education, obtaining experience, achieving certain results in the sphere of self-study. But there is some other problem, “As teachers, our fear of performance is an obstacle to the joyous inclusion of music in our classrooms. Our practice, however, assumes that children are more receptive to acquiring skills than we” (McTamaney, 2005). Thus, the teacher is responsible of the children’s actions not only because he/she performs the role of the advisor, mentor, tutor, instructor, and many others; he/she is the embodiment of wisdom, experience, knowledge; he/she serves a vivid example of the way of acting in different life situations. So, the teacher must show by personal example, how to act, what to say and how to say; here the rules of behavior and expressions of politeness are extremely important. If the teacher encourages children to act or speak in a certain way, the teacher becomes a responsible person, as he/she takes part in shaping the character, world outlook and the behavior of children.
One of the most sufficient ways of fostering creativity in young children is to help them to show their talents, make them participate in different games and performances; and the best method to achieve this goal is to introduce the use of music during the classroom activities.
Works Cited
Bright, Sarah. More than a Song: Integrating Musical Elements Meaningfully in the Early Childhood Classroom. Annapolis: The Key School.
Jones, Warren Duffer. (2005). Music, the Brain, and Education. Montessori Life, 40-45.
McTamaney, Catherine. (2005). Why Music? Montessori Life, 16-21.