might need assistance when given such choice. Activities included
› Art and child-initiated projects in one classroom
› Emergent reading and writing activities in another
› Math and science activities in a third classroom › A room for music, dramatic play, and sewing
That last room allowed children to explore a piano and rhythm instruments, to participate in visits by musicians, and to occasionally share in whole-group music experiences before dismissal. During quiet or rest time, children also had the option to go to a room that included music playing quietly. Fifty years later, the ideas in Kosower’ s article are helpful for teachers who want to collaborate and share space to provide child-led choices to explore instruments and singing.
In other articles from the YC archive, music was used to help children from birth through the early primary grades learn curricular content:
› In 1992, Kathy Dulaney Barclay and Lynn Walwer reviewed the power of song picture books to help support children’ s emergent literacy, concepts of print, and fluency skills. These books included titles such as Down by the Bay, by Raffi; The Friendly Beasts, by Tomie dePaola; and Over in the Meadow, by Olive A. Wadsworth and Ezra Jack Keats.
› In 2009, Eugene Geist suggested supporting infants’ and toddlers’ developing math patterning skills( recognizing, repeating, extending patterns) by rocking to music, playing rhythm instruments to a steady beat, and moving to music with repeated rhythmic patterns.
› Sally Moomaw and Jaumall A. Davis shared in 2010 how they extended preschoolers’ recognition and repetition of patterns by clapping rhythmic bird song patterns and by using solfège( a system where each pitch in the musical scale is given a syllable) to sing repeated bird calls.
› Anne K. Soderman and colleagues wrote in 2013 how poems, songs, and nursery rhymes can help dual language learners in preschool through first grade practice a new language in nonthreatening and enjoyable ways. Activities included engaging in repetition, investigating rhyming words and a language’ s rhythms, and using visuals and props to connect words to meanings.
› In 2020, Betsy Diamant-Cohen described Mother Goose on the Loose, a program centered around sharing nursery rhymes and songs with infants, toddlers, and their families to support children’ s development of oral language, emergent literacy, and social and emotional skills.
Music also helps early childhood educators connect to and teach about children’ s cultures. In a 2021 issue of Teaching Young Children, Anthony Broughton offered examples of how he incorporated hip-hop culture into his preschool learning setting. As children engaged in rapping, emceeing, deejaying, breaking, and beatboxing, they shared ideas and emotions through words, movements, and visual representations. They also incorporated social justice themes by composing and reciting rhythmic verses about important social topics. Hip-hop allowed Broughton to connect to children’ s lives and introduce musical experiences in which they could express themselves, practice language and literacy, and develop thinking and movement skills.
Celebrating Music for Its Own Sake
Beyond these mentions of music as a pedagogical tool to support learning across content areas and domains, more than 30 articles including the terms music, rhythm, and singing present music as important in its own right( see“ Centering Music” on page 59). In these Young Children articles, practitioners are invited to select music and materials that offer children meaningful and joyful experiences while singing, playing, listening to, moving to, and creating music. These opportunities
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