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By
Catherine M. Pruissen
All
children enjoy music. This is the time when a child
can bang on
a drum, sing to his/her heart's delight, make noise
using a variety of different instruments, or dance
up a storm.
Awe, the sheer delight of
it all!
But
music is more than just fun. It's an educational tool.
- The
repetition of a song helps a child to build memory,
listening and vocabulary skills.
- Group
singing enhances social skills while dance improves
coordination and helps develop the large muscles.
- Learning
new and creative dance steps or letting the children
perform their own dance encourages creative thinking
and independence.
- Creating
different sounds by putting more or fewer beans
in a can, or small or larger elastics around an
open cardboard box and listening to the different
sounds teach children to explore cause and effect
(science and logical thinking).
- More
than anything else, music is portable. You can sing
along the walk to the park, in the car, while washing
up for meals, or standing in line at the zoo.
Music
Centre Materials
The
equipment needed for a music centre can be as simple
as homemade items such as (let the children create
their own):
- cymbals
made from pot lids or pie tins
- drums
made from coffee cans with plastic lids, ice cream
buckets, plastic or metal containers
- drum
sticks such as wooden spoons, doweling of different
sizes, paint stirs, broom handles, etc.
- sand
blocks created out from blocks of wood and sand
paper
- tambourines
fashioned out of pie tins with bottle caps or paper
plates with bells attached
- maracas
made from yogurt containers filled with gravel,
beans, rice, or
- sand
or rhythm sticks using broom handles, different
size doweling or wooden spoons.
Instruments
such as guitars, flutes, recorders, etc. tape recorders,
children's music tapes and song books can be purchased
second hand to help cut down the costs, but should
be part of the music centre.
For
more information on setting up play centres in your
home or daycare centre, consult the wonderful book,
Start and Run a
Profitable Home Day Care, and check out these
other related articles:
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©
Catherine M. Pruissen
Catherine M. Pruissen is the CEO of About Child Care
Consumer Services and developer of child care online.
She has published numerous child care related literature,
including Start and
Run a Profitable Home Day Care, The
Daycare Alternative, How to Find Good Child Care,
Caregiver Aids: Business
Forms for Caregivers and Parents, Income
Tax & Record Keeping for Child Care Providers,
and a host of workshops and workbooks. She was the editor
and publisher of the bi-monthly newsletter, Parent Care,
Your Child Care News-line. Catherine was also the coordinator
and workshop facilitator for The Child Care Information
Centre in Calgary, Alberta, and ran a successful dayhome
for eight years. |
