Description
Do You Have the Job of Writing a Music Program for Your Centre?
You are probably feeling stressed and stretched for time when faced with the task of preparing a year-long program of preschool music activity ideas for the 3-5 year old group. Program writing is awfully time-consuming, not to mention confusing. That’s because it’s quite a specialised job requiring knowledge, skills, and dispositions in two growth and development fields — early childhood and music.
Chances are that if you start writing your program without expert support, you’ll spend the next 10 weekends and several evenings a week scrolling and reading on the Internet. This can go on for months and really consume your time and energies. The risk of being overwhelmed is high. What’s more, you might still miss some important new research or get fixated on a weird fad.
There are many subtle layers to curriculum design, including how your music program aligns with your national curriculum framework, your local cultural nuances, and each child’s musical background, interests, and needs.
National Early Years Learning Framework
For example, here’s a small taste of how Musical Child aligns with the Australian Early Years Learning Framework (the EYLF V.2).
Benefits for Children in line with the 5 EYLF Learning Outcomes
- IDENTITY — Music Is Key to Personal, Group and Cultural Identity
- CONNECTION and CONTRIBUTION — Music Engages and Connects Children to Past and Present Artists and Artworks Globally, Creating Music Contributes to Their Community
- WELLBEING — Music Releases Emotions and Develops Skills Necessary for Wellbeing
- LEARNING — Music Enhances Neural Networks and Supports Learning in Other Fields
- COMMUNICATION — Music Is Key to Effective Communication and Self-Expression
It’s complex. In the EYLF there are pages and pages dedicated to learning outcomes, what evidence to look for, and what educators do to promote this learning. You can find many more examples on our blogs and in our courses.
What’s the Solution?
Thankfully that’s our skill set here, we’re early childhood music specialists, so you can relax knowing you’re in the right place to get some authentic resources and expert help. Over the years our team has invested time and action research in developing products that positively affect children and educators alike.
Furthermore, you don’t have to keep buying licenses from us year after year, nor do you have to follow the programs exactly. This is not a franchise, it’s simply a resource and quite a sophisticated one with many layers of learning potential.
With our fully prepared Music and Movement (+ Drama) Curriculum you’ll cover all the bases and soon be customising it to fit your groups. And, we hope, you’ll want to add your personal creative flair.
Reviews By Other Buyers
Rated 5 out of 5
Eng Shyuan Tan (verified owner) – June 1, 2021
- Well structured program with a clear explanation of the objective of each activity so that teacher could understand the concept behind and able to deliver the subject confidently.
- Clear instructions on how to perform the music movement, it is really helpful.
- Songs Indexing – the soft copy of the guide and the songs indexing ease songs finding during classes.
- Song production – excellent quality song production, the children love the effect and sound, it is rich, variety of sounds according to the song theme.
Overall, the program provides excellent guide and confidence to the teacher that they could learn well on their own with well-structured content and resources.
What You’ll Gain by Using this Teaching Resource
Happy and Responsive Preschoolers
After one month of implementation, you will observe your children happily solve musical problems such as making interesting sounds; keeping up with the beat and complex rhythms; improvising and creating their own rhythmic patterns. They develop their cognitive skills by thinking about the stimulating new content you introduce; improvising and creating their own music; and learning to combine the skills of moving, singing and playing.
A Flexible Series of Music Sessions
Activities in the sessions are specifically designed to engage busy preschoolers; the full lessons are action-packed with movement and music as the main ingredients and yet brimful of language learning opportunities. Explore your mega-resource of flexible music activities designed to engage busy preschoolers and start making up your own worthwhile musical experiences or simply continue with the prepared lesson plans.
Each Educator’s Book will last for half a semester because each lesson plan gives you enough material for 2-4 weeks – There is so much variety and change of pace that this program can work in many ways, e.g. split the lesson plan titles between ages, some for the 3 -year-olds, other for the 4-year-olds; or chunk-down the lesson plans’ into ‘mini-musical experiences’ and scatter them throughout the week. And when you know the songs, you can sing them whenever you like throughout the year! Along the way, we encourage you to add your own creative flair!
A Delightful Way to Monitor and Assess
Monitor, record, and assess your children’s physical skill development over the whole year as the children become junior musicians, singing in tune; moving their fine muscles as they play to the beat on their instruments; improvising and creating their own songs and music; and moving their body through space in time with music of all genres from many cultures.
Socially Competent Preschoolers
The research is strong on the social-emotional gains. Watch your children increasingly demonstrate how they regulate their emotions – a skill critical for self-understanding, and getting along with others; and essential for metacognition or ‘learning to learn.’
Enormous Benefits in Language Development
Children benefit from listening to and learning the songs, the children become better listeners because they regularly tune in to the rhythm of the words in the new songs, learn new vocabulary and practice speech patterns.
You Feel Confident Teaching
You gain confidence doing music in front of your group because the program is well-designed by music education experts; the lessons are prepared so that you can successfully lead the children. And if something does go wrong, you have other activities and lessons ready and you can engage the children in completely new fun things to do week after week.
You Save Hundreds of Hours
Say goodbye to weekend and evening program planning time – you won’t have to figure out the learning opportunities, look up new songs, find the music, think up activities appropriate for the age, or work out a topic that brings everything together – it’s all done for you covering 10 or more weeks in one each of the four programs.
What You Get In Your Purchase
As soon as your payment goes through, you receive links to download the 4 Preschool Music Programs that make the Complete Preschool Music Program
Contents of the Full Program – Overview
- A Series of 4 Educator’s Books
- A Series of 4 Sets of Lyrics Charts
- A Series of 20 Digital Albums of MP3s (5 Albums Per Book)
Inside Each Program – Detail
Sing and Play 1: Singing All Day Long Educator’s Book by Carol Biddiss
Five fully prepared lesson plans:
- Part 1. Beautiful Farm
- Part 2. Cooks in the Kitchen
- Part 3. Surprise, Surprise!
- Part 4. Over the Sea
- Part 5. Holiday Fun
Sing and Play 2: Singing In My Heart Educator’s Book by Carol Biddiss
Five more fully prepared lesson plans:
- Part 6 My Body
- Part 7. Shoo Fly Shoo!
- Part 8. In My Heart
- Part 9. Be Kind to Animals
- Part 10. Candle Burning Bright
Sing and Play 3: Just for Fun Educator’s Book by Carol Biddiss
Five more fully prepared lesson plans:
- Part 11. New Games to Play;
- Part 12. Uh-oh!;
- Part 13. Birds and Animals;
- Part 14. Fun and Adventure; and
- Part 15. Are You Sleeping?
Sing and Play 4: Singing to the Sky Educator’s Book by Carol Biddiss
Five more fully prepared lesson plans:
- Part 16. All Kinds of Animals
- Part 17. Brave and Clever
- Part 18. On the Move
- Part 19. Christmas is Coming
- Part 20. Christmas is Here
More Detail
EDUCATOR’S BOOKS
In each of the four Educator’s Books, you get a Term Overview, Lesson Plans, and an Index of first lines, allowing you to find any song quickly. Each song has a short score with chords included in the activity page. Each book contains the General Introduction, the list of references, and the glossary of musical terms for the Sing and Play Series.
- In each lesson’s learning outcomes, you can see the benefits of early learning through music and there’s a specific section telling you what new learning the children might achieve in their language and speech. Across the series of lessons, you see the musical concepts learned: Simple scores with chords and suggestions for Classical music to play for cultural enrichment.
- Each program will last for a half-semester because each lesson plan gives you enough material for 2-3 weeks – There is so much variety and change of pace that this program can work in many ways. And when you know the songs you can sing them whenever you like throughout the year!
- Each lesson stands alone, you don’t need to follow a sequence at this age— it is more age-appropriate to provide fascinating experiences. Each lesson is an independent stimulus for participating in a series of preschool music activity ideas. Regular engagement in appropriate musical experiences is enough to promote natural growth and development. A child can enter your classroom and begin participating fully at any stage of the year, joining in at their own level and feeling part of the group.
- You can use the books in any order, or move the lesson plans around to suit your part of the world, seasons, and festivals e.g. in the US you need Sing and Play 3 and 4 for your Semester 1 so you get the Christmas Lessons in the right part of the year, whereas in southern Australia, you would start the school term in February with Sing and Play 1, and follow with Sing and Play 2 in Term 2 to end .
LYRIC CHARTS
Each set of lyric charts comes as a printable PDF between 55 and 72 pages
- Ready to read on screen or to print
- Display them in your room so that any adults can sing along with you
- When parents visit your classroom, they can see what the children have been learning
- In your music school, lyric charts encourage parents to sing in class time
DIGITAL ALBUMS
- You get 20 digital music albums with numbered sets of mp3s so you can always find the songs you need quickly. Download to your computer and sync to your devices in our suggested playlists, or make your own
- You get backing tracks to support you as you sing “live”. You also get all the matching vocal tracks assisting you to learn the songs by ear. You can use these vocal tracks if you ever experience any difficulty singing
- Our song choices include popular children’s songs, interesting nursery rhymes, folk songs, songs in languages other than English, and some new songs we’ve written because we needed them for a theme
Hear some of the music.
This is the album “Uh-oh! Previews“, just a sample of one of the five albums in the ‘Sing and Play 3’ Preschool Music Program.
Reviews By Other Buyers
Rated 5 out of 5 STARS
Here’s what a music educator from the UK says: “Having this library of work has been a godsend . . . it has really made such a difference to me.” Amy Ryan
Rated 5 out of 5 STARS
Ada Mary A’Beckett – July 26, 2020
Clearly, a lot of thought and effort has been poured into all of these packages and plans. They’re so much more than just a bunch of songs and activities, they’re full and accessible plans bundled together under popular themes and interests that flow naturally, extensively linked to EYLF and well supported with current research theory and literature. Downloaded along with several other packages to give our shiny new Music + movement program a big boost. Finding the dual tracks with and without vocals particularly useful for learning songs, then presenting with ‘live’ vocals. Highly recommended. Thanks, Carol!
How I Began (by Carol Biddiss)
I want to tell you the story of what it was like to start up Musical Child, my music education service.Here’s what I wrote in my first blog.
“If you are thinking of running music classes for children or indeed for groups of parents and children or in your community centre, daycare, preschool or kindergarten class, perhaps you’ll find it helpful.
… In the first few months there was a lot of reading in order to catch up on the latest research. I was also writing draft programs and playing lots of music in order to gather a repertoire of songs. At first, I had to imagine which ones would work with which age. I’d chosen two age ranges, loosely one to three years and then three to four which I later extended to five. It had been my intention to include a baby program, but it was so much work getting the toddler and preschooler up and running, the baby had to be kept waiting.
…I knew I wanted to work with groups and I also knew that I needed lots of interesting stuff to keep children and parents interested in making music together for a decent stretch of time. A piano lesson for a five year-old might last 30 minutes so I thought I could stretch that out to 45 if there were lots of different activities and different pieces of music.
Planning this endeavour was getting harder by the minute! One of the best decisions I made was to choose my kit of instruments with great care, considering safety and insisting on beautiful sound for my percussion. I also made sure that I had enough for everyone to play their own at the same time.
…One of my venues was a room in the garden at the back of my house. That kept me tidy! It was kind of thrilling and chaotic at the same time to have a new lesson written in time for each week for forty weeks. But there was joy in the accomplishment of getting those ideas about children’s natural musicality ‘out there’ in the wider world,” (only in three suburbs!).
If you want to know more you can read the blog post here.
Why Would You Follow Carol Biddiss, Director of Musical Child?
- Carol Biddiss M.Ed. (Deakin University) has a background and qualifications in education, teaching and learning practice, and curriculum writing in schools, universities, TAFE, and Distance Education.
- Her approach to curriculum and training relies closely on the latest frameworks and research in early childhood learning from Australia, Canada, Finland, the U.K., the U.S and China.
- Because of its strong evidence base, her work is relevant to music teachers, early childhood professionals, universities, training organizations, and parents/carers who understand the value of music.
- Consultancy service and online courses in studies early childhood music.
- Founder and director of a publishing house, Musical Child, dedicated to providing research-based music resources and training for early childhood education.
About Musical Child
Musical Child. Early Learning through Music, was originally developed in Australia as a music school and became a registered business in 2004.
- The music school grew to serve several locations, including a regional site
- The services expanded to include the delivery of music sessions for Early Learning Centres
- Now, through its publications Musical Child has an international presence through associations with the educators who implement our curriculum.
- Influencing Baby, Toddler and Preschool music programs in over 50 countries in private music schools, arts academies, early learning centres, and schools.
As well as our role as a music education publishing house since 2008, we also provide curriculum development and training in early childhood music, dance and drama (performing arts).
Collaborations include:
- Working with staff in a preschool in regional South Australia on a project called ‘Building Phonemic Awareness Through Music and Movement’ assisted by a Grant from the South Australian Department of Education’s Music Innovation Fund.Provision of instruments and ongoing sessions with children and staff. Included a full-day professional development program delivered at the site for staff and guest educators and follow-up sessions.
- Working with community cultural development officers in remote South Australia to refresh a local government-run music program for parents and children.
- Working with a private music teacher in Hong Kong to deliver ‘customised digital music albums for parents of a music school’.
- Working via Zoom to deliver online workshops in ‘early learning approaches’ to music teachers in Mongolia.
We are currently working on translating our programs for 0-3 year-olds and 3-6 year-olds for Chinese-speaking teachers who wish to teach English songs. This is part of our provision of bilingual early learning programs in China in association with our esteemed colleague since 2015, Xinyan Li Director of Education @ Kids ‘R’ Kids China Limited.
Read about Carol Biddiss and Musical Child — more on LinkedIn
Pricing Options
Compare the Prices
Complete Preschool Music Program AUD 470 one-time price
Also available as 4 Separate Programs for AUD 139 each TOTAL 4 X $139= $556 a saving of $86
Also available as a self-directed Course Preschool and Junior $570 as a subscription of AUD 57 per month for 10 months a saving of $100
Also available as Single Lesson Plans AUD 33.70 each TOTAL 20 X $33.70 = $674 a saving of $204
Bonuses for You
- A 30-minute Private Zoom Call with the Creator of Musical Child, Carol Biddiss M.Ed Value – $127
- ‘All Together Now’ Educator’s Notes $27— our new way to program for a month at a time + All Together Now Digital Album Value – $11.99
- Let’s Count in Song – Preschool Songs for Addition and Subtraction Value – $39.99
- Musical Child Sing and Play Complete List of Songs.pdf
AND we have a limited number of Hard Copies of the first 5 Parts of our 20 Part Program. This Printed and CD Version of Sing and Play 1 Educator’s Kit – Hard Copy** is valued at $225 we will post it for FREE to our Australian customers who opt in by email after their purchase of the Complete Preschool Music Program ‘Sing and Play’. It’s not often that we give away something this valuable for free.
(**while stocks last; sorry, not available to our international customers)
- 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed
- 90-Day Money Back Guarantee
*100% Money Back Guarantee
Since 2008 our music education products have helped more than 274,000 children around the world. As a time-tested, proven product, we are pleased to offer you a 100% money back guarantee on all our digital curriculum resources purchased from this website. If after 60 days you are not happy with the results you obtain in your children’s learning from the use of our products, we will happily refund 100% of your purchase price. All we require is that you provide evidence that you have delivered the program according to the written guidelines at least once a week during the 60 days. This refund offer expires 90 days after you make your purchase.
**License
What follows is a small part of the full License document. Please read it in full here.
“This Resource contains material which is owned by or licensed to us. This material includes, but is not limited to, the design, layout, look, sound, appearance, trademarks and graphics. We maintain the intellectual property rights in the Resource. When you purchase a Resource, you’re purchasing a License to use the Resource in accordance with the terms of this licensing policy.
Your License means you can use the Resource for your own personal purposes, for your individual study and to teach your students. Your License is for use by you and is a non-exclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, non-transferable, worldwide, limited license to use the Resource for the purposes and under the conditions described as follows.
You are not permitted to reproduce the documents, media, information or materials in the Resource for the purposes of sale, advertising or marketing, or the use by any third party. In particular you are not permitted to republish, upload, transmit electronically or otherwise or distribute any of the materials, documents or media in this Resource except in the following instance: teaching online.
Teaching online
If you are teaching online, you are permitted to screen-share necessary pages of the document and upload audio and video parts of the Resource to contribute to your own live lesson. You are not permitted to upload the Resource in its entirety. For online teaching, you must have a secure means that enables you to restrict the access to only your students and their parents/carers for a limited time, no longer than 3 months, and to an enrolment of 200 or less students per term/semester.
You are not permitted to upload any part of the Resource to websites, applications, shared drives or other services in a way that enables access to anyone other than your enrolled students and their parents/carers. You may not make the music available by download to the parents/carers without our express permission; an additional license fee will apply.
Commercial use
You may use the content in a profit-making activity if that activity is the direct teaching of music to children and the enrolment in your business is 200 or less per term/semester or you have additional licenses for higher enrolments. Otherwise, you may not, except with our express written permission, distribute or commercially exploit the content.”
What you have read here is a small part of the full License document. Please read it in full on this link
As an added bonus, you don’t have to keep buying licenses from us year on year, nor do you have to follow the programs exactly. This is not a franchise, it’s simply a resource, and quite a sophisticated one with many layers of learning potential.
With our fully prepared Music and Movement (+ Drama) Program you’ll cover all the bases and soon be customising it to fit your groups and national framework guidelines.
Reviews By Other Buyers
Rated 5 out of 5
Amy Ryan (verified owner) – June 24, 2020
I cannot recommend this product more highly. I have wanted to set up my own music business for pre-schoolers for some time but the rather daunting prospect of sourcing a library of suitable music really did put me off. All of the programmes offer a huge variety of songs all recorded at a suitable pace for little ears. There is so much flexibility within the programmes allowing you to follow and create your own ideas but equally the educator packs give wonderful step by step guidance if you want a more detailed illustration of how to run sessions even down to which instruments to use when. The most important element for me was also FREEDOM. Having run a franchised business in the past, which was wonderful but for obvious reasons completely “scripted” it is just awesome to be able to do my own thing with advice if needed but no constraints. Musical Child gets a huge thumbs up from me and all of my musical little people. Thank you. I will be back. Many, many times x Amy
Get in NOW while this offer lasts
Buying at this price saves you lots of time, effort, and money in the short and long term (between AUD 86 and AUD 516 depending on where you live and what bonuses you take up)
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