Select sounds and create patterns
Continue to encourage free exploration of instruments and sound makers, interacting with the child to develop their skills when appropriate.
Children may briefly decide upon and repeat patterns of sounds.
Teachers may copy the child’s idea and this may lead to a ‘musical conversation’. Teachers may add to the child’s idea and vice versa.
Record children’s improvisations and play them back to see children’s reactions.
Encourage children to choose sounds and make up patterns to represent different characters or events in a story or song.
Use traditional nursery rhymes, books from the classroom, and other familiar stories.
Invite children to create musical ideas based on given themes, e.g. minibeasts, the seaside.
Speak to the adults who work at the school to see if this can be linked into the topic work that children are doing in their classrooms.
Encourage children to use symbols to represent their own compositions, e.g. picture cards/objects to represent different sounds or patterns.
Encourage children to use toys or picture cards to create rhythm compositions using word rhythms. For example, order a group of objects (e.g. orange, pear, apple, bear – linked to the book of the same name by Emily Gravett) then clap and say them together.
This rhythm work can link up with early phonics.
Invite children to choose instruments to represent different ingredients (e.g. shaker for sugar, drum for flour). Encourage children to ‘mix’ their chosen sounds in an order of their choosing to create a musical recipe.
Encourage children to record voices or environmental sounds on a tablet and manipulate them by changing speed or pitch and layering to build an electronic soundscape.
Explore the progression of this Learning Descriptor
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