Nursery World - Editor’s view - All singing and dancing

‘All we need is music, sweet music. There’ll be music everywhere’, as Martha and the Vandellas sang in Dancing in the Street.

And music does indeed play a pivotal part in human development, as Linda Pound explains in her major new series, starting on page 18.

Music is one of those elements that early years educators often lack confidence in supporting children with, so Linda’s articles will aim to provide guidance as well as explaining how music can be part of every area of learning in the Early Years Foundation Stage.

It is interesting that music seems to be of the very greatest importance in terms of cognition and emotion at the earliest and the later stages of life. Babies and young children love lullabies, songs and moving to music wiithout inhibition. Elderly people, particularly with dementia, can be transformed by music, remembering and responding to tunes and lyrics when memory otherwise fails. The recent surge in the popularityof inter-generational projects bringing nursery children into care homes will no doubt see lots of singing and dancing going on for young and old.

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