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How to Plan a Successful Early Childhood Music Class

I was introduced to early childhood music in 1997 at Temple University, where I observed music enrichment classes based on Dr. Gordon's Music Learning Theory. It's been over two decades, but I still remember the feeling of excitement and wonder as I watched the beautiful and interactive "dance" of songs, chants, patterns, movement, and play. It looked so easy, but as it turned out, leading a rich and meaningful early childhood music class is not easy at all. It requires an enormous amount of preparation, from understanding how very young children learn music to developing a repertoire of tunes to learning to improvise in every tonality, meter, tempo, and keyality in the moment and on the spot. Over the years of leading early childhood music enrichment classes, I have noticed that each class had a similar shape. While songs and activities varied from week to week, the overall shape followed somewhat of a classical sonata. The following "map" is based o...