Lauren and I recently went on a “Let’s make some noise with toddlers” course. This was all about, well you probably guessed it, making lots of noise! (editors note, I don’t think there was ever a doubt that you both would pass this course…) However it was more about how and what we used to make the noise with. Music and noise can support the development of two year olds listening and attention skills, it can also develop their understanding and expressive language skills. This course gave myself and Lauren some more practical ideas for musical and noise play that can support your child’s learning.
A few questions were asked at our course, such as “Are the songs sung whilst you are sat down?” “Do you use actions?” “Do you use props?” Moving, actions, props and noise are the four important words we learned!
So we headed back to Free Rangers HQ with lots of new ideas, songs and games to play. One idea that our burrowers have taken too brilliantly are the “voice sound cards”. Whilst we do our circle time, we have a quick go at our sound cards. The sound cards are A4 pieces with a picture on, for example we have, a cow, a clock, a train and many more! We asked the children “what noise does the cow make?” They all reply with great confidence “mooooo”. We went through all of the pictures telling and introducing new sounds to them, we also added actions to each one. The sound cards enable us to use our voices to make different sounds, so for example when we show the picture of the girl on the slide, we ensure are voices start with a lower pitch and end with a higher pitch. Please do ask your child if they are in the burrow, they are all brilliant at doing them! The sound cards are available from a website called “Twinkl” which also offers lots of other resources for children of all ages. See the link!
Other aspects on the course involved environmental sounds, instrumental sounds and body percussions. Environmental sounds lets children turn their ears on, there is a “Tap stick walk” which is where every child will have a tapsticks – if you don’t have tapsticks, you could use normal sticks, spoons and so on – where you can go around the room, or outdoors tapping different items or walls or floors and talk about what sound they make, whether they are “loud” “soft” “big” and so on. This then continues into instrumental sounds, so giving everyone an instrument each. There’s a song which has the tune of “Here we go round the mulberry bush” and it goes –
“This is the way we loudly play,
Loudly play, loudly play,
This is the way we loudly play,
When we’re making music”
And you can change the word to quietly/slowly/quickly and so on!
Body percussions allows us to make sounds using our body, for example, clapping! There are many songs which immediately spring to mind which allows us to use our body to make some sounds, the farmers in his den, the grand of duke of York and monkeys jumping on the bed! This allows us to make stomping noises with feet, move around the room and use lots of movement! So remember, moving, actions, props and noise!!
Thanks for reading,
Nicola