Music Centers

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.

Music For Education

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.