Exploration in the Early Years
I’ve received a handful of questions about how I structure the early years music classes I teach. Each school’s expectations have been different, but the one thing I have come to learn is that students thrive on exploration and discovery. Now, I am a firm believer in guided exploration. I do not advocate for the idea that exploration is “do whatever you want.” I think exploration requires some guardrails so that it can have the potential to be meaningful in a student’s learning.
My first experience teaching PreK was at my position in China. I had a bit of a clue about what to expect, but when English wasn’t a student’s first language, a new layer of challenge was presented to me. Honestly, those littles ate me alive for the first couple of weeks! However, once I reframed and recalibrated a 30-minute lesson to include student exploration, I began to enjoy and look forward to our time together.
Hence, this is how centers came about in my Pre-K lessons. These are constantly evolving, and I am always watching how students play in each to adjust to their needs. I am pleasantly surprised by how they do not require something new every week. I sometimes grow insecure around repeating songs and centers from one week to the next, but I have learned that children thrive and appreciate familiarity.
As I mentioned in the last blog article, the centers I design are directly related to the mini-lesson I offer at the beginning of a class.
Here are some quick ideas for Pre-K music centers.
iPad station: I created beat pictures of the songs we sang in the mini-lesson. I’ve recorded my voice singing while clicking the beat on claves. Students are encouraged to sing along while touching the icon to the beat.
Desk Bells or Boomwackers: At first, this is meant to be a student exploration center. I only include la-sol-mi bells in hopes students will discover that those are the pitches in some of the songs from the mini-lesson. Eventually, I will offer laminated cards that notate the corresponding colors of the bells to the songs they know, using iconic notation on a 3-line staff.
UPP: This is a station of unpitched percussion (UPP) that they can explore. Things like rhythm sticks, egg shakers, clatterpillars, tambourines, wood blocks (with a rubber mallet), and more are the typical choices. I will change the UPP every other lesson or so.
Movement Station: I lead this station with chosen music, demonstrating clear patterns representing musical form, pitch direction, and steady beat. As always, the props add a lot of excitement and interest! Consider adding scarves, streamers, and paper plates, some students will take the puppets over to this station to “dance.” It’s pretty cute.
Puppet Station: This station is included if I do puppets in some fashion during the mini-lesson. This station of play is an easy opportunity for imitation of songs, and poems, and often students make up their own narrative between two puppets.
Coloring Station: I will choose one of our poems or songs from the mini-lesson. So, if the poem is about pumpkin patches, I’ll have a clip art line drawing of pumpkins with the poem’s text below. I want students to have something to take home that may have their parents ask if they can sing/recite it back. At the end of the year, I compile the coloring station’s pages and call it their “score” for music class.
I don’t necessarily use all these stations at once as it would probably be too many choices.
I will start with 3 and grow throughout the year to 5 or 6.
I do allow students to roam freely between the stations. There is not a timer running.
15 minutes seems to be just the right amount of time for this portion of the class.
Then, before we know it, it’s time to clean up and say goodbye!