Musical Mayhem

Forget glue and coloured paper - today I really stirred things up. A fundamental concept in early childhood education that I have been trying to get across is the idea of the teacher as facilitator - observing children at play and finding appropriate ways to support and extend what they are doing beyond what they would have achieved on their own.
One little boy today was playing a drum, and was clearly very interested in it. I sat down with him and joined in with a tambourine, following his lead with the rhythm. After a while I gave him the tambourine and he started to play them both together. His sense of rhythm is amazing:

 

After the tambourine was stolen from under his nose by another little boy, they started to play together. They were beginning to vary the tempo of their playing, so I encouraged this by moving to their music, marching slowly on the spot and then speeding up to a fast tip-toe jog as they got faster. They thought this was fantastic and might have continued endlessly if my energy levels had been up to it!

 

 

By this time, other children were starting to take an interest, and the teacher was beginning to regard me with a certain degree of scepticism and alarm. Several other children joined in, using anything that came to hand to serve as drums and drumsticks. It did get rather noisy...

I was impressed, though, with their level of cooperation and concentration.

 

 

I suggested to the teacher that we could incorporate these children's interest in the percussion instruments into an activity with the whole class. So just before lunchtime we played some movement games and sang songs with children taking turns to lead on the percussion.

 

When the children were sleeping after lunch, we talked through the morning. I explained the method in my apparent musical madness, and encouraged the teacher to give the children further opportunities to use the instruments. I wonder if she will...