A space for listening to and making music is an essential and always well-used part of any setting. Music and movement gives children a way of learning though all of their senses and is also a good place to focus on a theme of opposites.
Sound it out Try some of these ten opportunities for exploring opposites of sound:
* Take children on a listening walk and listen for sounds loud and soft.
* Invite children to invent clapping patterns, loud and soft, fast and slow.
* Visit places with an echo and try shouting, whispering and singing and hearing the echo.
* Suggest that the children listen to marching band music and then create their own marching dance with high steps and low steps, fast and slow strides. Encourage them to describe the steps and strides that they are using.
* Organise a 'choir' to sing a nursery rhyme or song. Rehearse half the 'choir' singing in a normal voice and the other half singing softly and as a repeat chorus.
* Play 'Whispers' by passing a word such as high or low round the circle and ask the next child to say the opposite word. Tell the children to listen carefully and see if they can hear the words 'high' and 'low' going round the circle.
* Drop different objects on different surfaces and talk about the noises.
* Sort instruments by loud and soft sounds and long and short notes.
* Fill pots with different objects, seal them, then sort them by loud and soft rattle.
* Investigate whether holding a shaker in a high or low position affects the sound it makes when shaken.
Listen up
Listening is a skill that some children find quite difficult to develop, especially if there is a lot of extraneous noise in their lives. Organise quiet listening times sometimes and during the sessions:
* Ask the children to sit very still with their eyes shut and see if they can identify particular sounds.
* Discuss whether the sounds they hear are loud or quiet, nice or nasty.
* Ask if they can hear sounds from outside or from other rooms.
* Decide what were the loudest and the quietest sounds that they heard.
* Ask the children to use a tape recorder to record their favourite and their least favourite sounds.
* Work in pairs and decide which are the quietest and noisiest spots in the setting.
* Discuss what is making the noise and how the noisy area could become quieter.
* Talk about how people know if someone is listening or not listening.
* Play a game of 'Speaking and listening' by inviting someone to close their eyes, listen and then guess who is speaking to them. Suggest the speaker recites a nursery rhyme to the listener.
Tune in
Arrange for the children to look at, examine and handle a wide range of musical instruments including those from different countries and cultures.
Discuss with the children how each musical instrument can be played to produce different kinds of sounds: loud and quiet, long and short, high and low.
Explore making your own instruments, such as shakers (plastic pots filled with rice, pulses or raisins), blowers (lengths of tubing or hollow cylinders) and pluckers (an elastic band stretched between two nails in a piece of wood, and then pluck the band).
Assemble an orchestra of home-made instruments. Invite the children to take turns to be the conductor and decide how the conductor will indicate when the music is to be loud or soft, fast or slow.
