TOPIC 5 (2)

MOVEMENT AND MUSIC APPRECIATION

Introduction
Children acquire musical understandings and communication skills as they progress
developmentally from enactive hands-on experience to meaningful pictorial representations,
and finally to the use of abstract mutually agreed upon symbolic representations of sound ideas.
This three-phase cycle is repeated with various degrees of emphasis at each phase as each new
learning experience is encountered. The appropriateness of the learning process and content is
predicated on the childs developmental level.
A) The Infants Behavior
Infants (6 to 18 months old) begin very early to explore their vocal sounds bubbling,
cooing, and gurgling. Typically, there is much parent-infant preverbal communication with
baby talk. Papousek describes the nature of baby talk in terms of its many musical elements:

Baby talk is simple in structure and contains many invitations to dialogue and/or
warnings.
Melodic contours are more expressive than normal speech, and they contain enhanced
rhythms and word stress.
The pitch of baby talk is higher than normal speech, nearer that of the infants range.
Parts of baby talk are sung rather than spoken.
Rising contours are used to attract attention; falling contours are used to calm the baby.
The baby is provided opportunities to compare his or her own vocal productions with
others through imitative vocal play between adult and child.
Repetitive musical patterns are consistently uttered by parents.

The Infants Musical Play

They enjoy being sung to they like to hear lullabies, songs with surprises, songs of their
culture, songs hat mommy and daddy sing for their own enjoyment and share with the
baby.
They participate in musical baby talk play (1) The mother hears the baby coo and
echoes the sound, initiating more coos from the baby. (2) The parent and infant
participate in a dialogue, alternating, but not necessarily imitating, a variety of
nonverbal sounds. (3) The mother speaks low and soft as the baby is quited.
They enjoy the adults singing while being rocked, stroked, and/or gently patted.
They respond happily to rhythmic play during body touch, singing, and chanting games.
They enjoy tactile modeling play in response to music The adult guides the one-yearold childs hands or body in movement responses such as rhythmic swaying, clapping,
rubbing babys hand, or dancing while carrying the baby.
They enjoy bouncing motion.
They hear recorded music of many styles and from many cultures
They exhibit curiosity about where the song or sound is coming from by touching the
singers or whistlers lips.
They experiment with gestures such as clapping and pointing.
They can bounce or awkwardly jump while holding the hands of the adult.

B) The Toddlers Behavior

Toddlers acquisition of language highlights this developmental stage.
They start to speak sentences, which are characterized by a predominance of nouns.
They repeat words frequently, use fewer nonsense sounds, and say two-and three-word
sentences more often.
They talk to themselves more than he actually uses speech in a dialogue.
They show rapidly increasing vocabulary and can follow simple directions.
Speech is accompanied by body movements, such as refusing her head when saying
no.
They play with language, which is often used rhythmically and repetitively.
They point and gesture when language is inadequate,
They appreciate rituals, enjoying the same story over and over again.
Delayed responses characterized by an outward passivity and watchfulness during the
activity and a response sometime later are typical.
The Toddlers Musical Play
They are distinctly aware of musical and nonmusical sounds.
They create their own made-up songs.
They sing simple one-or two- word songs depending on the stage of language
acquisition.
They enjoy voice inflection games.
They demand repetition of a song, story, or instrumental sound.
They sing global perimeters of traditional songs.
They combine bits of traditional songs with their own improvised songs.
They are curious about sounds and shapes of all classroom and orchestral instruments.
They love to make random sounds on the keyboard while an adult is performing.
They move gleefully as recorded music play.
They enjoy tactile modeling play with an adult.
They need real-looking objects to manipulate during musical play.
They often display a delayed response during music time.
C) The Three-Year-Olds Behavior
Three-year-olds have more command of the language than toddlers, and they use language
fluently and with confidence. They use words to control, and they can be controlled by
words. Three-year olds listen when reasoned with and attend to adult conversations with
interest. Their ideas often formulate faster than they can form the words to express them.
Three-year-olds typically use a word or phrase to stand for a combination of several
concepts, such as dog for all animals. They are sociocentric in speech, that is, they address
the hearer, consider his point of view, try to influence him, or actually exchange ideas with
him.
They are excited by challenges, such as walking backwards without peeking. They no longer
walk within arms outstretched, and they can gallop, jump, run, and walk with relative ease.
Children at this age are better able to run fast or slow, with more smoothness and can
negotiate sudden stops. They have better defined, less diffuse and less repetitive hand
movement. Finally, they are able to listen and understand simple instructions better.

The Three-Year-Olds Musical Play

At this age, children are becoming more competent in performing music. Cooperative plays
in large-group music sessions, as well as individual play, are effective ways for these children
to interact. They musically respond in the following ways:
They are more able to reproduce a recognizable song
They perform with an increasing ability to match pitches when singing with others.
They recognize the correct rhythmic and melodic contour of a song, but cannot always
reproduce what was heard.
They enjoy manipulating hands-on play objects while creating songs.
They enjoy creating songs that accompany play
They move spontaneously to many styles of music
They successfully imitate the simple movements of others
They enjoy having their own ideas copied by others.
They can handle mallets and drums beaters in a more coordinated manner
They are increasing their ability to maintain a steady beat accompaniment.
They respond to sound and silent games
They enjoy listening to music
D) The Four-Year-Olds Behavior
Imaginative play begins to enter the childrens world. Howeve, four-years-old are still
sorting out fantasy and reality, often believing that everything thay see is real. These
children talk a great deal, exaggerate, boast, tell tall tales, and ask many questions. Often,
questions are used as a device to keep the conversation going rather than to seek more
information. At this age, they like nonsense words, silly language, rhyming , and new and
different words. They interject irrelavant subjects that reveal their inattention to the
ongoing activity and their inability to internalize and recall previous experiences. They also
love dramatic play, are able pretenders, and readily assume the roles of imaginary and real
characteristics.
Four-years-old possess good motor conrol they can run more smoothly and stand on one
foot. Small-muscle coordination is more controlled in these children, as indicated by their
ability to cut on a line and handle small objects such as beads and puzzle pieces. Finally fouryears-olds test their power over objects, other children and adults. They like to see how
hard they can throw an object or how safe is it to say No! to a parent.
The Four-Years-Olds Musical Play
Children at this ahe become rather competant musicians. Their increased skills and
understandings afford many options for experiencing music. They are musically respond in
the following ways:
They demonstrate awareness of beat, tempo (fast-slow), volume (loud-soft), pitch (highlow), and form (same and different phases).
They enjoy singing a wide variety of songs.
They perform best when songs are within their singing range.
They continue to make up their own songs/instrumental pieces but are more critical of
their own efforts; they now demand a more traditional musical structure in their own
improvised songs.
When guided, they can follow a musical story sequence, such as one involving the size
and speed of moving trains.

They explore sounds of musical instruments with great deal.

They begin to play siimple accompaniments on instruments that have controlled
pitches.
They can idenitfy the shape, size, and sound of classroom and some orchestral
instruments.
They delight in expressively moving to music.
They use movement to describe distinct ideas heard in the music.

E) The Five-Year-Olds Behavior

Five-year-olds strive to use new and larger words and question the meaning of words. They
are aware of symbols and ask questions about their meanings, At this stage, children are
really seeking information when they ask questions. In addition, five-year-olds are able to
group or classify objects on the basis of similarities, are mor e attentive to detail, and thus
are more aware of differentation. These children imitate readily but may think it is their own
idea. They also think more logically when sequencing story ideas. Finally, at this age,
children use their imagination to a great extent in play to increase their skills and sense of
power.
The Five-Year-Olds Musical Play
Children of this age are increasingly able to accurately perform and understand musical
ideas. They are growing in ability to interact with icons and introductory-level musical
symbols. Five-year-olds musicaaly respond in these ways:
They enjoy performing alone as well as in a group.
They acquire a large repertoire of songs.
They play instruments alone and in ensemble.
They demonstrate an increasing ability to play simple melodies on bells.
They continue to move expresively to many different styles of music.
They can follow movement directions for simple traditional dances.
They become more competent in responding to the underlying beat or pulse of music.
They uuse rhythmic body sounds to accompany songs and chants.
They improvise their own songs and instrumental pieces.
They can create intrumental and vocal introductions, codas, or endings to phrases.
They love participating in musical drama
They are delighted by live musical performances.
They can identify various large performing groups such as bands, orchestras, and choirs.