Music Education in Kindergarten: Introduction to Music and the Arts!
At the Mikros Maestros Kindergarten in Thessaloniki, children have already acquired a lot of foundational knowledge through music. According to the Integrated Interdisciplinary Curriculum Framework for Kindergarten, all activities are developed with the contribution of music. Music aims at cultivating aesthetic ability and sensitivity, understanding pleasure, and unlocking creative potential (Curriculum). Through pleasure, relaxation, and familiarity, children easily understand the learning goals aligned with the kindergarten curriculum. Specifically, learning music contributes to all the following subjects that are part of the kindergarten’s program:
• Mathematics and Music:
Children learn to classify traditional musical instruments into wind, percussion, and string instruments. They also graphically represent the concept of pitch (high/low) and measure rhythms.
• Oral Communication and Music:
Children learn to seek information about instruments, recognize their names from pictures, describe and justify the playing of musical instruments, and stabilize their voice in traditional songs.
• Writing and Music:
Through music, children’s writing skills are enhanced as they learn to write the names of musical instruments and types of songs, categorizing them into cards or categories.
• Geography and Music:
In the field of geographical knowledge, music provides an enjoyable “tone” as children learn about the customs and traditions of their own and other cultures. They develop the ability to recognize where specific sounds and songs come from and locate them on both the Greek and world maps.
• Natural Sciences and Music:
The presence of music education in the field of natural sciences is particularly important. By combining these subjects, children learn to recognize the source and direction of sound and distinguish musical instruments by their timbre. They become familiar with the sound, timbre, pitch, and speed of music.
• Biology and Music:
Children expand their knowledge of animal organisms, their characteristics, their sounds, and the importance of breathing when playing wind instruments.
• Dramatic Art and Music:
Music and drama are two inseparable concepts. Our kindergarten students have the opportunity to express themselves through improvisation and mimicry, dramatizing a folk song, developing their imagination and creativity, and also expressing riddles and tongue twisters with rhythmic movements.
• Visual Arts and Music:
Through music lessons, children express the feelings evoked by listening to songs using colors. They create collages and draw traditional musical instruments.
• Physical Education and Music:
Movement and music go hand in hand. Children become familiar with the concept of rhythm.
• Informatics and Music:
Music is taught through technology and interactive whiteboards. Music games and design tools are used through the interactive board.
Teaching music in this way is an innovation in the educational program of Mikros Maestros, as children not only become familiar with music, but also engage with concepts from other learning areas, realizing the unity of knowledge and the world of science and culture.
Additionally, in the preschool section, we work on first-level music theory through Nakas’ book “First Ask the Note.” Children learn note values and time signatures in first music theory.
However, the most important thing is that students at Mikros Maestros, from a very young age, are introduced to the magical world of music, gaining comprehensive sensory development, such as eye-hand coordination, movement, rhythm, instruments, and dance.
