Young Children - March 2008 - (Page 24) correspondence. When babies and toddlers bang cabinet doors or clang pots and pans, they not only exercise some of their newfound abilities but also demonstrate their emerging mathematical understanding (Holden 1997). Infants and toddlers enjoy exploring the sounds they can make with drums. The example in “A Drumming Experience with a 4-Year-Old” illustrates visual and auditory imitation and supports a one-to-one correspondence relationship in the child’s mind. Teachers can emphasize regular steady beats through movement activities such as tapping cymbals, shaking maracas, and marching. Observe children imitating complex rhythms to determine their skill levels. When a child cannot follow your lead, consider whether the rhythm may be too complex or perhaps too easy, thus boring the child. You can adjust the complexity by changing the tempo or playing more steady beats in the activity. Even amateur musicians can use elements of steady beat, rhythm, melody, tempo, dynamics, style, and timbre in interacting with children. These music/math techniques can make learning much more enjoyable and effective. Any activity can be made musical. For example, a teacher observes a child playing with colored blocks in a more or less random manner. To help the child recognize and sort by color, the teacher can chant the following phrases using a steady beat. A Drumming Experience with a 4-Year-Old 1. Play one beat on your drum and wait for the child to play a beat on his or her drum. 2. Listen to what the child plays, then repeat it. 3. Follow the child’s lead. If the child goes beyond a single beat into a rhythm, repeat the full sequence back to the child. 4. Create a rhythm with two beats if the child persists in using just one beat. Wait to see if the child imitates. If the child does not imitate exactly, it’s OK. Just continue to create any rhythm. If the child does not play at all when asked to imitate, encourage the child to play along with you. with different ways to sing the word blue, such as making the ghost-like sound blooooo to make the activity more enjoyable. The fun has real purpose, however; the change in timbre brings attention to the targeted concept. Finally, you can change the style of the music to focus a child’s attention. Knowing how to sing or chant various styles might take some practice and a bit of courage. If you aren’t familiar Rhythm Here is a red bowl. There is a blue bowl. with music’s various styles, spend Beat 1 2 3 4 some time listening and identifying difRhythm Put the red blocks in the red bowl and the blue blocks in the blue. ferent styles of music. Then, chant or 4 1 2 3 Beat sing for the children in a certain style. Can you sing the examples given in this Usually, phrases with four or eight steady beats are most article in a country style? At first, you may feel a bit silly, but effective. Remember, varying the steady beat can keep a such singing can be fun for adults and children alike. child’s attention. For children who need extra help, the teacher can repeat the phrases in a simpler way, such as this: Conclusion Rhythm Beat Red in Red and Blue in Blue 1 2 1 2 Research on emergent mathematics is beginning to show that even infants can interact with and understand mathematics (Berger, Tzur, & Posner 2006; Brannon, Lutz, & Cordes 2006; Jordan & Brannon 2006; van Marle & Wynn 2008). Music can be an ideal and exciting tool for supporting early mathematical thinking (Geist 2001). Even the youngest children can engage in music experiences. Teachers can use the structure of musical elements such as steady beat, rhythm, and melody to support many different classroom activities. Mathematical activities such as patterning and one-to-one correspondence are especially easy to link to music. All teachers are musicians. You don’t have to be a trained professional to use these techniques in your classroom. If you have trouble singing, then chant. Remember, as Harold Hill says in The Music Man, singing is just sustained talking. To fit a child’s individual learning needs, a teacher can change the tempo, making the beat faster or slower. Also try using dynamic changes to promote learning. For example, if a child has trouble matching the blue block with the blue bowl, the teacher can chant the word blue in a louder voice. This will give the child a clue to help her identify the bowl of the same color. The teacher could give the child another clue by pausing and slowing the tempo right before saying blue. Teachers can use timbre, the quality of the sound, to get children’s attention. Try making a different quality of sound for a concept that a child finds challenging. Experiment 24 Young Children • March 2008
For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.