In Montessori, music is both interwoven into the curriculum and its own area of study.
Music is part of regular weekly lessons for Forestville Montessori toddler, pre-school and primary school students. We also run music-based activities such as yesterday’s African Drumming event, and tomorrow’s close-up with accomplished musician Genevieve Lang, who will play the harp and teach students about this beautiful instrument (keep your eye on our socials to see this one!)
Like other subjects in Montessori, music begins sensorially, isolates difficulty through key lessons, and engages children in spontaneous forms of expression.
Learn more as we journey through the stages of musical education at Forestville Montessori…
Music for Toddlers and Pre-school children
In our Toddler and Children’s House classrooms, we first offer sensorial experiences and impressions related to music. We encourage listening and awareness, perhaps hearing the snap of the snaps of the dressing frame or noticing the delicacy of the sound when placing a glass vase on a tray. The sound cylinders also help children distinguish fine gradations of softness and loudness. In the Silence Game, children become attuned to the many types of sounds around them when they sit quietly and listen.
Children are also able to link music and movement through the rhythm work in walking on the line activities, as well as simple activity rhymes, chants, and a wide repertoire of songs. In fact, we sing with the children every day because singing together is a powerful community builder!
We also offer children opportunities to listen to the music of various cultures. They love the challenge of identifying instruments by the sounds that they make, too.
For Montessori primary school children
With the beautiful Montessori bells, children begin to discriminate pitch by first playing individual bells, and then pairing and grading according to pitch. Next, they move on to naming the pitches and matching the pitches with their notes. Eventually, children learn the placement of the notes on the musical staff, as well as how scales and melodies can be written with notes on the staff.
Using the tone bars, children learn about the degrees of the scale, intervals, the sequence of major scales with sharps and flats, key signatures, transposition, and the naming and notation of minor scales.
The Montessori music program provides keys to music that can be presented by any trained Montessori teacher regardless of musical background.
Music as a form language
Ultimately, music is a language of communication. Because music is a language, we think about music development as we do children’s language development and honor both the “spoken stage” and “written stage.”
Within the spoken stage, we may observe children picking away at bells or tone bars, striking notes without any apparent purpose. We treat this activity with respect as it represents the babbling stage of music.
While the bells and tone bars are used for many purposes, including work with music notation, they are first and foremost musical instruments and children love incorporating songs into classroom performances and sharing.
An expansive music program
In our school community, the music program is broad. It includes music appreciation and history, singing, movement/dance, rhythm, pitch, intensity, timbre, form, style, listening, instrumental work, music theory, and the science behind the music.
By isolating difficulties and providing various preparation of skills, even our youngest children come to extemporaneous and spontaneous composition.
Music plays a vital role in culture, communication, connection, self-expression and joy.
At FMS, we want our students to experience these essential aspects of life and offer a broad range of musical activities to assist! In addition to weekly music classes, in-class learning, musical excursions and concerts, we offer students private lessons in violin and piano. We also just launched a new FMS school choir!
With so much music on offer, we hope we might inspire our future musicians to connect to their life’s work, to uncover a personal talent or simply find joy in the everyday experience of music.
Even for students who do not go on to have a greater musical connection, the expansive experience of music at Forestville Montessori School encourages all students to develop an appreciation and understanding of this essential part of human culture.
