05/07/2023
5 easy musical ideas to enjoy with your child…
1. 🎵 Sing - children love singing, almost everyone can do it, and it’s a brilliant way to bond with your little one. You don’t need to be pitch perfect or have an incredible voice, your child will love it because it’s fun time spent with you!
2. 👂🏽Listen - get out into nature and see what you can hear, whether it’s absolute silence, the trickle of a stream, rumble of a nearby road or the song of a bird. Encouraging children to listen attentively is great for mindfulness and the sounds of nature help children feel calm and happy.
3. 🥁 Create - make a drum kit out of the kitchen pans, a guitar from an elastic band and an old shoe box or a shaker from a jar and some dry rice. See how many different musical instruments you can create from the things you have lying around the house and record your own composition. Kids love making noise and recognising that different size pans or different thickness of elastic bands can create different pitches is a fantastic lead into a home science lesson as well as a music one!
4. 🖍️ Draw - listen to a piece of music and draw how it makes you feel. Compare the pictures you make when listening to different styles of music and talk about how they differ. Why did you use red? What about this music made you feel like drawing wavy lines? This is not only a great way to get children listening to more diverse music, it’s extremely therapeutic and a great way to explore feelings and emotions with children. It’s incredible how expressive and creative they can be.
5. 🩰 Dance - just because! It’s fun, it’s good for you and there are so many musical elements being imbedded in a child who is dancing. Learning about beat, rhythm, pitch, dynamics and structure are all best done by moving your body!