Drum Explorations: Ms. Kattan's curriculum letter

Hello, my name is Iman Kattan and I am an intern in your child’s classroom this semester. I am in the classroom all day Friday. As an intern, I am learning how to run a classroom and interact with students. I regularly write and plan lessons for the children in the classroom. So far, I’ve observed that the children in the classroom really enjoy making music with instruments. As a student teacher, I take children’s interest and plan lessons around it. The children have been doing small group activities planned around music, instruments and movements. So far, the children have explored different size drums, finger cymbals, and guitars with another intern. The children are learning the concept of rhythm, performing, pitch, beats and movement.

The big idea for our lessons on music and movement is to develop children’s knowledge about how to manipulate sound using instruments. The implementation of previous lessons included children exploring different size drums and finger cymbals. The children have been experimenting with sound and movement. We have been doing the inquiry lessons in the gross motor room, so the children have lots of room to move instruments and their bodies to make music. Some of the children have moved instruments around to see how it affected the sound produced. They noticed that the sound changes when they hit it with a different amount of force and angle. The children also danced while they played instruments and moved their bodies. They experimented with the concept of loud and soft sounds. They used different methods to make soft and loud sounds. They used more force to create louder sounds and less to make softer sounds. I have observed children using their bodies to make sound. They used their hands and fingers to make sounds. I plan to expand children’s learning by planning future lessons on making sounds with different tools. Some of the materials I plan to provide include bells, straws, and different size drumsticks. The children will be able to test out different materials and how they change the sounds produced. The children were engaged and explored the instruments by making music, moving their bodies and singing along. They noticed the amount of force they used affected the sound projected by the instrument. The children worked on their fine and large motor skills while working with the instruments. They also learned to differentiate between loud and soft sounds. To further this learning, the children will continue to explore sounds, movements with instruments. In the next lesson we will explore different materials including small and large rocks, sea shells, and feathers. They will use these materials to see how they can change the sound produced by the drum. For future lessons I plan to talk about the lessons with parents and encourage them to join us. I will start the discussion when I see them at drop off and pick up. Family members can continue and extend the experience by finding different materials they have at home and experimenting with them. This lesson was constructed with the ECEC’s preference for the Reggio Emilia educational philosophy. This insures that the all the lessons planed are hands on and created with child’s interest in mind.