It's a musical world...
At Buckle My Shoe, we love to provide our tamariki with opportunities that support and extend on their interests, as well as their learning and development. Recently, our wonderful teacher Tracey noticed that there was a growing interest in music at the centre and decided to bring in something special from home.
When the children arrived at Buckle My Shoe, they noticed something different set up in the Under 2’s room. “Who brought that?”, some little ones questioned. “Does it work?”, some inquired. “I think it’s a piano!”, others shared. With so much conversation happening around this new object, we decided to bring the object out on the deck – ready for our eager explorers to get their thinking on! 😊
Like a moth to a flame, our little ones found a space around the instrument and began exploring. “Look at all the buttons”, one child said as he looked closely at the panel above the keys - “there’s an orange triangle button and a green square button, I wonder what it does?”
The keys caught another one of our littlie’s attention. “There are some white and some black”, she stated and began pressing down on each one.
“Look, there’s a letter in my name!” one child said excitedly as he pointed to the letter ‘C’ written on one of the keys. This sparked a discussion about what letters they could see written on the keys and what they might mean. “What do you think this instrument is called?”, we asked and many of the children were convinced it was a piano. We decided to investigate to confirm this theory.
After searching for the word ‘piano’ on Google and clicking on images, what we found looked different to what was in front of us. “This doesn’t look like a piano”, one child confirmed and so we decided to search for ‘instruments with keys’. As we looked through the photos, we compared the instrument we had in front of us to the images we had found. It wasn’t a piano, an accordion, or a harmonium – it was a keyboard!!! 😊
“Why are there no sounds coming out of it?” was the next question and it was at that point, that we noticed a plug attached to its side. Curious to make some music, we moved the keyboard inside and plugged it in.
Later on the in the afternoon, the keyboard was set up in our Under 2’s space and it was very interesting to watch how our younger learners interacted with this musical resource. They enjoyed pressing the buttons, moving their bodies to the sounds and watching how the keys sprung back up.
Listening to music and exploring different musical instruments can have so many benefits for our little learners, some of which include improving their well-being, supporting their brain development and helping with memory retention. Music connects with the part of the brain that is responsible for emotional development, reading & maths and is a great way for children to express themselves.
There was so much learning happening in this keyboard experience. The simple movement of pressing keys is an opportunity for our tamariki to strengthen their finger muscles, improve their fine motor skills and their pencil grip. Along with a chance to develop concentration and focus, this was a great opportunity for our little learners to work on their listening skills too.
An important part of our philosophy is to provide little ones with quality experiences and an environment that empowers them to ‘reach for the stars’. This means encouraging children to search for and find answers to their own questions. Not only were they invited to explore music in this instance, they were also working as a group to investigate, problem solve and research what the instrument was, have conversations about its features and learn together! 👍