Listening through drawing
By: Emma Jayne Morgan
In the early years one of the most important skills to support are listening skills as
this is linked to so many other areas of development. Listening skills are needed for
communication and language development, being able to listen to one’s peers will
benefit social development and sound differentiation will help with literacy skills.
Therefore, activities which benefit listening skills are very important, but they need
to be fun and active to hold a child’s attention.
One of these activities is listening through drawing. Children listen to music and are
asked to draw what they hear or feel. First, practice just listening for short periods of time
so that the children get used to the idea of purely listening. Then ask the children
to listen to a longer piece of music (usually containing no words), play it a second time
asking them to use a variety of paints, crayons, pens etc. to draw what they hear or the
pattern of the music. As an observer, you can see the individual ways the children
represent what they are hearing. Patterns often follow the rhythm or pitch of the music
and colours reflect the emotions it incites. Once the music has stopped the drawing must
also stop and then it is interesting to discuss the choices of pattern or colour the children
made.
This type of activity is an interesting indication of how each child listens and can be used
as a reinforcement for listening skills which children will enjoy, it also allows them to
express themselves.
For more information come along to our afternoon tea on Tuesday May 9th at the
Centro hotel, Al Barsha, at 4.30pm!