Children Musical Education Essay Example For Students

Children Musical Education Essay A detailed synopsis of the guidance of young children from Absorption toPurposeful Response. Early is the best time to start children with an enrichedmusical background. The earlier the child starts to hear and learn about music,the more enriched and fulfilling the childs experience of music is going tobe. This is even more beneficial for talented children. A child cannot receivethe full benefit of music and will not learn as much or at all without the firstthree stages of preparatory audiation. With this in mind, I will now show youhow to guide children through these stages. First of all, we need to look atresources. For this particular situation, I will have two helpers, two rooms inwhich to work (one is furnished with cribs, the other is mostly open space witha carpet). Also, I will have a good sound system in both rooms (that includes atape player and compact disc player), and some money (available to buyrecordings and equipment). Next is the age range of the children. This is no trelated to the resources, but important. The age range is between shortly afterbirth and about 36 months (3 years). The first stage is Absorption. One of themost difficult things to do when guiding children through these stages is toknow when the right time is to move them to the next stage. This often requiresmuch patience. The reason that you need so much patience is because all childrenmove through the different stages of preparatory audiation at different times. The times when children move are as different as their handwriting. In theAbsorption stage, children are absorbing music. But, not all music isappropriate. Most of the music that should be played is live music. It shouldalso be played in different keyalities, tonalities, harmonies, meters, andtempos. When playing such diverse groups of music it is also important to notplay music with words. Why you ask? Because if you play music with words. Thechildren seem to focus their attention more on the words than the music itself. Out of the two rooms that we have, I would use the one room, which has the cribsin it for the children in the absorption stage. This would be more appropriatefor children in the absorption stage than for children in any other stagebecause the children in the absorption stage are the youngest. I am going togive names to my two helpers so that we can easily tell the difference betweenthe two. The one helper that is going to be helping me with the children in theabsorption stage is named Mary. The other helper, which will help me with thetwo other stages (random response and purposeful response), is named Peter. Marywould be playing live music for the children. Live music and/or any kind ofmusic that you play for children must be pleasing to the ear. It is alsoimportant that children hear a wide variety of instruments so they areintroduced to a variety of pitches and timbres. Another thing is thatchildrens attention spans are very short. This means that it is best to playonly short sect ions of music or music with frequent shifts in dynamics, timbre,and tempo. This encourages children to continually redirect their attention tothe music. Once you think a child is ready to go through the absorption stage,than you can go onto the next stage, which is random response. But, before achild can go through absorption you must make sure the child is really ready togo to the next stage. On thing you do not want to do is to rush a child througheach stage. They must be emotionally ready. Even if it seems like they arementally or physically ready, you must wait. One thing I would do is start intostep two to find out if they are ready. If they are ready, they will start doingthings in step two. Step one and two overlap one another. The way I would beable to tell if they changed is by looking at the different things they doduring this stage. In the second stage children begin to make babble sounds andmovements. These are not coordinated with each other or with aspects in theenviro nment and should not even be interpreted as an attempt by children toimitate what they are listening to or seeing, or as a conscious response to whatthey have listened to or seen. Adults guiding children at this stage need tounderstand that at this age children simply have the need to babble. Anotheractivity that happens during stage two is group interaction. It is important inthis stage that children have this because children learn much about music as aresult of listening to and observing other children of similar ages as theyattempt to sing chant and move. One of the purposes of stage two of preparatoryaudiation is to continue childrens exposure to music so that they will bebetter acculturated to the sound of more complex music than in stage one. Evenanother thing that happens during this stage is random movement that is mostlyassociated with subjective tonality and subjective meter. Although they makethese movements, they should not be expected to imitate anything. Only thenatur al sounds and random movements that children voluntarily engage in shouldbe encouraged. Children are still encouraged to listen to music as in stage one. Female Self Esteem EssayAbsorption, random response, and purposeful response are not all of the parts ofteaching children music, but they are the fundamentals. Without this guidance,most children will not be able to go far in their musical ability.