PRESCHOOLERS & A FUN VOCAL WARM-UP!
Photo from the artists at Bigstock Photo
The little kids and I have been really working on singing on pitch together. I find it so interesting that the little "learning communities" that develop in the Montessori Preschool classroom begin to sing & play so well together...like a little band! We often affectionately name our classroom bands: There's "The Daffodil Band", "The Dinosaur Band", even "The Reptiles!"
One of the standards in all my Preschool music lessons is our vocal warm-up at the beginning of each class. As we playfully warm up our voices, I see the children smiling and really enjoying stretching their vocal range. Many young children are just discovering their "singing voices" since this is also a developmental process in early childhood. (Much like the development of language skills)
For more on the developmental stages of a child's singing voice you can check out this article I posted in my 2012 Blog:
Giraffes and developing a singing voice in young children
Giraffes and developing a singing voice in young children
Here's another one of my quirky little videos with some of the vocal warm-ups I do with little kids:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnxSq743A4Q
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnxSq743A4Q
This week, the children took a big musical step and followed a "pitch game" by listening to the recording of children singing up & down the musical scale, then copying with their own voices! I knew this was a big hit when I got these little comments: "More...More!"
I create my weekly lessons from various sources, and one of my favorites is the curriculum I have from Bushfire Press (out of Australia) called "Music Room: Primary Level". That's where I got the recording for the "pitch game." Their website is chock-ful of wonderful resources and many free downloads!
Here's the link:
Later in the lesson, the children listened to Glockenspiel music and played along to a funny song "Ipsy-Wipsy Spider" (Music Room again) I brought enough small Glockenspiels for the older groups to play a "Glockenspiel ensemble" with half the children playing maracas and half playing Glockenspiels. Sounded wonderful! They were so proud of themselves!
Preschoolers love playing the wonderful sounding Glockenspiel and saying it's name, too!
Photo from the artists at Bigstock Photo
It's incredibly fun for me to watch the wonderful progress of all my little Preschoolers who are developing into wonderful musicians!

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