The toddlers have been exploring their environment and showing interest in creating music out on the playground.
One morning, they noticed one of their educators taking out drums along with sticks. The children would approach the drums and feel how it is on the outside. Julia shared, “It’s so hard,” and Wyatt began saying, “Tap, tap.” The toddlers immediately picked up the drum sticks and started hitting it against the drum, they would shout and sing along while creating music. Educator Ruth approached the children and would ask “What do you hear? Why do you think it makes that certain sound?” The children wondered, then shared “Because it’s a drum!” Later on, we observed the children being very intrigued with the Boom Whackers -which are colourful tubes that are intended to make different sounds when hit on different surfaces. They would hit two of them together and would hear a certain sound, Ben shared with his educators “Listen, listen,” with excitement. The other children were curious and wanted to try the same thing. Alex and Destin picked up a Boom Whacker immediately putting it up to their mouth to listen to the unique sound it would make. The boys looked around to see what the reaction was. Their peers clapped and wanted more for them to keep going.
A week later, Julia came across two wooden sticks as she was walking around the natural playground. She found another two wooden sticks, approached Lylah and handed them over to her. They both walked up to the small log and started hitting the sticks against the log. Julia shared “I’m playing a drum!” Both children were able to encourage each other and hear each other play their drum.
The children enhanced their social development, emotional development, as well as cognition development through exploring music in their environment. The children manipulated the materials and tried to discover what music sounds like. Looking at social development they demonstrated social interest as many peers would follow each other and engage in small group activities.
Looking at emotional development, they were able to demonstrate expression of feelings.
If they were happy they would sing and show it in their body language. With Cognitive Development, they would demonstrate symbolic thought, representation and root skill of literacy as well as problem solve.
We will continue to support the children by implementing new activities/toys in our program for them to explore new instruments and discover unique sounds.
