Early Childhood Music & Movement

Students ages 6 and younger use an approach developed by John Feierabend called First Steps in Music. The classes focus on developing tuneful, beatful, and artful children. Dr. Feierabend writes the following about his curriculum: “The First Steps in Music curriculum is based on an extensive survey of research related to the development of singing and movement skills in young children, as well as many years of practical experiences sharing musical activities with this age group. It is this combination of research-based curriculum, high-quality literature, and practical experience that makes the First Steps in Music curriculum exceptional.”

Activities for the various classes include the following at varying degrees of difficulty:

• pitch exploration—helps children discover the sensation of singing voice by engaging the vocal muscles used to sing in the head voice.
• song fragments (echo songs and call-and-response songs)—develop the children’s musical skills by providing an opportunity to sing a short phrase alone.
• simple songs—encourage independent singing from children while they assimilate the whole song.
• arioso (child created tunes)—the more tunes and songs the children have learned and the more opportunities they have to make up tunes and songs, the better their original music thinking attempts will become.
• movement exploration—prepares the body coordination children need to develop expressive musical sensitivity through movement.
• movement for form and expression—helps the children experience the expressive qualities in music through movement while also experiencing the musical form/structure through organized movement.
• movement with the beat—develops the ability to feel beat, and eventually feel beat in groups of two and three.

First Steps in Music Classes…

• Inspire children to listen, feel and move to music of all kinds.
• Develop a child’s imagination through songs and movement.
• Encourage constructive social interactions with other children.
• Are fun for kids and parents alike!

Students who develop their tuneful, beatful, and artful skills will be able to intuitively do the following:

• Sing with the correct vocal placement (head voice).
• Sing with accuracy in solo situations and within a group.
• Sing with expression.
• Maintain beat motion in coordination with a rhyme, song, or recorded example.
• Demonstrated a feeling of how beats are grouped by two and three with beat motions.
• Move expressively to reflect the expressive elements in recorded music.
• Have feelingful responses when listening to music.

To learn more about the First Steps in Music classes offered at Maranatha, please read “Ages 6 and Younger Info,” “Class Policies,” and “Piano at Age 7.”

Students ages 7 and older use learn how to express music with the piano using an engaging sound before sight approach developed by John Feierabend called Conversational Solfege. The simple premise on which this method is based is the same one which is advocated for the teaching of language—language skills are developed by the ear before reading and/or writing of language is introduced. In other words, conversational skills are developed prior to reading and writing.

Why do we teach using a sound before sight approach? Well, think about the traditional piano lesson in terms of Howard Gardner’s multiple intelligences. Students are working on their spatial intelligence (the piano keys), their logical/mathematical intelligence (the note values and names), their linguistic intelligence (the teacher talk), and their bodily kinesthetic intelligence (movement on keyboard). What part of the lesson is really working on developing musical intelligence? Students learning the sound before sight approach to music will use the piano to express music as opposed to simply hearing music through the piano. Thus, this is a 4 semester music program helping students learn to proficiently sing, play the piano, read, write, and create music. Using a 12 step music literacy method, students will participate in engaging activities to develop their musical and pianistic skills.

Students should not learn the piano until they are first tuneful, beatful, and artful. In other words, students need to have developed accurate and expressive singing voices and be able to maintain a steady beat.

To learn more about the Making Music with Piano classes offered at Maranatha, please read “Ages 7 and up info,” “Piano at Age 7,” and “Class Policies.”

Dr. Rick Townsend has years of experience teaching early childhood classes as well as early childhood education collegiate courses. Dr. Townsend also serves as managing director of the national Early Childhood Music and Movement Association.

Janet Tschida has successfully completed Dr. Feierabend’s graduate level courses “First Steps in Music” and “Conversational Solfege” at Silver Lake College in Manitowoc. Janet has also completed various levels of Musikgarten certifications.

Upper level students who have completed the early childhood music course with Dr. Townsend and have taught at least one year at Kiddie Kampus teach early childhood courses as well.