Music With Noel

Curriculum Night 2014

In the beginning…
In the beginning, the most important function music serves is to ease anxiety. The first thing I want to teach a 2 year old is that school is a place where we have fun.

I start with the simplest songs, the ABCs, Twinkle, Twinkle, and The Itsy Bitsy Spider. These songs help teach the beginnings of language. Our goal is to rock “Baby Beluga” by the time the year ends.

Sophmores
When we are 3, we’re going to start to learn more complex songs. Now we’re ready to go deeper into our Broadway repertoire, “Tomorrow,”, “My Favorite Things” and learn fun pop songs like “Jeremiah was a Bullfrog” and “Sing A Song”.

Seniors
4 year olds take music to another level. Our songs are going to be longer and more complex, including 2 or 3 verses and choruses.  We'll take on songs like “This land is your land”, “The train they call the city of New Orleans”, “Oh, What a Beautiful Morning” and “I Can See Clearly Now.” 

What makes music fun?
What makes music great for kids?  For me, the answer is that there’s a tremendous amount of learning that occurs effortlessly. What we’re doing is having fun, and while we’re having fun, our vocabulary is exploding and our memories are developing.

Connections to literature
I have a bunch of picture books that go along with some of my songs. I often ask one of the teachers to hold the book and turn the pages as we sing the song. What this does is deepen the connection to the ways they’re using books in the classroom, and re-inforces the notion that there is something extremely interesting going on in these objects we call books.  Songs can also be stories.

Community Building
This is one of the most important lessons I teach. Through singing as a group, children develop a sense of belonging to a community; to something larger than themselves. And as a group, we are strong.

Instruments (Kazoos and Shakers)
I use kazoos often with the 2s and 3s. Deep breathing in and out is extremely important to brain development. I have also discovered that kids with language delays really benefit from playing the kazoo. Also, kazoos are great for kids who are shy, because the lesson here is “it’s ok to be loud! Let’s make some noise!”

Shakers are fun and really help with rhythmic development which is known to sharpen our math skills.

Enjoy!