Many thanks to Donna for the rich discussion on the importance of music and movement in our classrooms!
Notes from Donna:
- When I reflect on music and movement with children, one of the first things I think of is community, and how music helps to build community through behaviors like interdependence, friendship, peaceful coexistence, and communicating with each other.
- Music is such a great way to build relationships and develop and refine social and emotional skills. The community of children that are singing or dancing together depend on each other.
- For example; if a child goes the wrong direction in a musical game, the words or the actions of the others allow the child to self-correct and builds goodwill within the community.
- These experiences can be the beginnings of very deep friendships.
- Within a community, a child will need to have the ability to control their behavior, developing a refining prosocial behaviors.
- Self-regulation, the term that refers to a child's ability to manage “one’s emotional state and physical needs” is enhanced by music and movement activities.
- Three varieties of self regulation:
- emotional regulation skills encompass the extent to which a child can move back and forth between heightened emotional states and a state of calm.
- attentional regulation - are required for children to proceed with a task when there are distractions present.
- executive functions -control a child’s behavior and cognition. Executive functions are especially relevant to music because within them are the specific processes of memory, inhibition, and mental flexibility.
- Children display working memory skills when they perform an ordered series of movements, such as patting the knees, clapping once, and then clapping their partner’s hands.
- A child with good inhibition skills can wait for a cue before touching an instrument, refrain from calling out randomly during a song or game, or wait for a cue before touching a body part during a game of Simon Says.
- A flexible child can hear a melody and focus on the words, ignoring the melody, then hear the same melody and focus on the melodic contour, ignoring the words. This child is able to switch attention between related aspects of a task.
One of the activities that I find very helpful with students that are struggling with executive function skills or dysregulation is drumming. There are so many things you can do with a small drum circle or percussion circle that help to develop all of the above skills!
- When children explore songs from many different cultures, their social world becomes richer and more varied. Music games can facilitate the child’s emotional world becoming deeper as well. When a child is given the opportunity to explore a variety of songs, and play different roles with their voice or movement, they begin to develop many different ways to express themselves. This lays the cornerstone for building empathy.
Episode 8
