The Carabo-Cone Method

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A method of music teaching that is based on a sensory-motor approach to learning

is that of Madeleine Carabo-Cone, a New York music teacher, who structured an
environment in which elementary school children learn music through movement,
guided games, and play. She worked with a Harlem Day Care Center in 1969 to
apply the method to 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds in a pilot project having as its goal "the
intellectual stimulation of preschoolers through sensory-motor 66 experience" (p.
37).

General perception development and concept formation were emphasized

throughout the project (Nye, 1979, p. 37). The Carabo-Cone method is based on
the belief that highly stmctured subject matter can be introduced to a child if it can
be translated into an environment that the child can explore, discover, and
assimilate as he did his original environment as an infant The structured
environment includes a piano and large drawings of the grand staff on the floor, on
a large table top, and on plastic wall charts. The children are guided to act out
certain musical concepts by seeing, touching, hearing, and responding physically
through movement. Thus, the grand staff and its musical notation appear to the
child as a game-court or "gymnasium" for stimulating the mind and body (Carabo-
Cone, 1969, p. 2).

Through personal experience, children deal with the concept of directionality, as

well as the mathematical concepts of sequence and equality. Initially, children are
not introduced to note names, but rather, the learning area is limited to ten black
lines and their adjacent white spaces and to the simplicity of sticks and circles that
are the components of musical note values. It is the quick recognition of these stick
and circle elements in alphabetical letters and musical symbols that is the basis for
reading. Understanding these concepts facilitates music reading, lengthens
attention span, strengthens visual perception, and intensifies concentration (Mark,
1986, p. 173).

Children not only attain concepts of self-awareness, directionality, space, and time,
but they also begin to acquire a basic sense of ownership as they "become" the
various musical components, such as parts of the 67 staff, note values, musical
instruments, or parts of a song. By wearing musical costumes and identification
cards, students function as central figures in the musical score. As such, they are
immersed in the musical environment and absorb it naturally through the senses
and kinesthetic experiences (Carabo-Cone, 1969, p. 2).

In the Carabo-Cone method, all abstract ideas are translated into concrete objects
with which the child is in constant physical contact. The entire program consists of
concrete operations—leaming by doing, leaming by being, and leaming by making.
The essence of acquiring knowledge involves the child's physical, psychological, and
intellectual powers and mirrors the original approach to leaming through the early
developmental stages (Carabo-Cone, 1969, p. 4).