Music Makers

Now I'm the first to say that music is not my strength. I definitely can't hold a note, sing, or even play a musical instrument, but I had a great time planning and facilitating our 'Music Makers' Discovery session for our Mountaineers (Mountaineers are our four-year-old pre-school visitors).

(Don't worry if your child loves music and singing. I am great at playing CD's and using You Tube, and I love teaching new finger-play songs!)

Here we are making our own musical instruments; guitars, drums, and anything else we were inspired to make. We also wrote certificates for our friends to give to them for making such wonderful musical instruments, thanks Sparklebox.

We sold concert tickets and dressed up to perform a concert for our friends.

 

.We filled the little containers from the inside of 

Kinder Surprise eggs with different things. We loved listening to the sounds they made. (A big thank you to my two boys at home for eating all of those eggs for me!)

 We used these cards from Sparklebox to practice our handwriting on the mini-whiteboards.

We cut and sorted different types of musical instruments and glued them onto paper.

We used this website to explore music and different instruments on the interactive whiteboards.

We also had a great and extremely loud time playing lots of different musical instruments and exploring the different sounds they make.

This week we have been working on looking after property. Our musical instruments and the special things we have out for Discovery need to be used carefully. I was impressed to see children trying hard to use our equipment carefully and putting it away when they were finished. The ability to have gentle hands and look after things that we use at school also extends to looking after and using our gentle hands with our friends, this is very important and sometimes difficult for some children just starting school. (Something we are still working on is looking after property by tidying up at clean-up time - there is always a mess around the art and craft activities.)

I love to include our dress-up box during our Discovery session for several reasons:

• Children can practice opening and closing zips, buttons, velcro, and laces.
• They have an opportunity to take clothes on and off, practicing one leg before the other and turning clothes the correct way out so they are ready to wear.
• Dressing up allows children to have the opportunity to mimic in a safe environment things they have seen in real life.
• Children use their imagination by inventing multiple uses for different dress-up costumes.
• Children learn responsibility by returning the dress-ups to the correct place for others to use.
• Waiting for a turn at wearing a particular costume allows children to practice sharing and turn-taking - something very important for school children.
• Acting is also a great way for children to channel their emotions in a healthy and harmless manner.