Creative Arts: Ages Three to Six
Music
In Montessori early childhood settings music is integrated into the environment and the curriculum. It is not treated as something separate taught only by music experts. It is a form of human expression open to everyone.
In the Children’s House children are introduced to four parallel series of music activities and exercises in each of the following areas:
singing
music appreciation
music literacy (pitch and notation) with the Montessori bells
rhythm (notation)
playing of instruments
The music materials in Montessori early childhood settings have the following features:
They are always available for the children to use when they choose (except for the percussion instruments).
They are prepared so children can use them independently.
They allow for repetition.
They are designed to lead to concentration, perseverance, success and confidence.
They are an integral and constant part of the environment.
Music: Auditory discrimination 1.CA.010
Knowledge, Skills and Understanding
Typically children will:
.01 Explore differences in sound and sound qualities
.02 Learn the language to talk about sound e.g., soft/loud, high/low and the comparatives and superlatives
.03 Apply knowledge and understanding about sound to the outside world.
＋ Materials and Activity
Activities include:
- sound games e.g., indicating the direction of sound, describing sounds
- silence game.
Resources include:
- sounds in the environment
- sound boxes.
＋ Links to Australian Curriculum (ACv9)
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Music: Singing 1.CA.020
Knowledge, Skills and Understanding
Typically children will:
.01 Sing to a range of music
.02 Sing varying the volume and pitch (loud/soft; high/low)
.03 Enjoy singing simple songs and melodies
.04 Sing the scale
.05 Express oneself through singing
.06 Develop pitch recognition
＋ Materials and Activity
Activities include:
- singing without accompaniment
- singing with accompaniment including the Montessori bells.
Resources include:
- simple songs
- folk songs
＋ Links to Australian Curriculum (ACv9)
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Music: Appreciation 1.CA.030
Knowledge, Skills and Understanding
Typically children will:
.01 Learn to appreciate a variety of music in the world
＋ Materials and Activity
Activities include:
- independent listening to recordings of selected pieces of music
- learning about the instruments of the orchestra
- listening to different instruments
- learning about sacred narratives (songlines) that have passed on history
- visiting musicians
- using musical vocabulary and listening to/reading age-appropriate stories and/or reference material about music and musicians.
Resources include:
- live performances
- recordings of many kinds of music from around the world labelled with name of piece, composer and type of music.
＋ Links to Australian Curriculum (ACv9)
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Music: Timbre 1.CA.040
Knowledge, Skills and Understanding
Typically children will:
.01 Listen to and play simple instruments
＋ Materials and Activity
Activities include:
- listening to and playing instruments.
Resources include:
- percussion and other simple instruments.
＋ Links to Australian Curriculum (ACv9)
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Music: Pitch and notation 1.CA.050
Knowledge, Skills and Understanding
Typically children will:
.01 Identify pitch
.02 Hear, match and grade pitch
.03 Distinguish high/low
.04 Play known tunes
.05 Create own tunes
.06 Use symbol systems to represent musical sounds
＋ Materials and Activity
Activities include:
- sensorial matching and grading activities with the bells
- playing and singing simple songs
- composing using the bells
- writing and reading music.
Resources include:
- the Montessori bells (two sets of matching bells accurately pitched diatonic and C Major scale plus the five sharps/flats that will turn the C major scale into a chromatic scale)
- moveable wooden notes, G clef, F clef
- wooden notation/staff boards
- staff paper
- musical nomenclature cards.
＋ Links to Australian Curriculum (ACv9)
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Music: Rhythm 1.CA.060
Knowledge, Skills and Understanding
Typically children will:
.01 Experience and recognise a variety of rhythm patterns
＋ Materials and Activity
Activities include:
- walking, running, marching and skipping on the line to music
- foot tapping, clapping, swaying during songs
- creating rhythms with hands and rhythm instruments.
Resources include:
- Montessori bells or piano or recordings of appropriate music for movement on the line
- rhythm cards and charts
- a large line on the floor that has long straight lines with gentle curves at the corners for rhythmical movement on the line.
＋ Links to Australian Curriculum (ACv9)
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Visual Arts
Artistic expression was considered by Dr Montessori to be one of the fundamental needs of humans. In particular, she encouraged children to draw. She felt that if children have fine motor control of the hand, learned through the exercises of practical life, combined with trained skills in perception, learned through the exercises of the senses, they would be able to create visual art works of a high quality.
Dr Montessori (1965/1918: 286) observed that during periods of creative drawing and design work children concentrate ‘deeply and wholly’ with their ‘entire intellect at work’. She describes the process in the following way:
To confer the gift of drawing, we must create an eye that sees, a hand that obeys, a soul that feels; and in this task the whole of life must cooperate
(Montessori 1965/1918: 289).
Art appreciation is also an important aspect of Montessori early childhood settings. By looking at the artworks of others, children learn that it is possible to create different and unique works while using knowledge, skill and techniques developed by others.
Art is integrated into the Montessori approach in ways that include the following:
the exercises of practical life and the senses are extended into a range of self-expression activities, including work with clay, collage, chalk, paint, charcoal, crayon, oil pastel, cutting, soft wire, weaving and printing
written language work, including creative writing and poetry, is illustrated by the children.
In the Children’s House art activities include drawing, painting, design work, collage, printing, flower arranging, sewing and handiwork, modelling with clay, colour mixing, art appreciation cards, wall pictures, and stories. Techniques and processes for using different media are shown to the children in discrete activities presented individually or in small groups. All the materials for each activity are kept together, and children are free to choose the activity and explore the media, and processes involved, independently. There should, however, be a limited amount of art available at any given time. Two, or at the most, three different kinds of media at a time are sufficient.
Visual Arts 1.CA.070
Knowledge, Skills and Understanding
Typically children will:
.01 Experience a variety of art media with natural and man-made elements and imagine what they are communicating to them
.02 Express themselves through a variety visual art media and share discoveries with others
.03 Begin to appreciate artistic expression from around the world e.g. First Australian’s and other countries’ rock art and the changes in art over time
＋ Materials and Activity
Activities include:
- extending skills gained in exercises of practical life e.g., how to hold a paint brush, how to clean up, how to hang up painting to dry, how to hold a pencil
- extending understanding of colour and shape gained in exercises of the senses e.g., colour boxes, geometry cabinet, botany cabinet, colour boxes
- extending design work with metal insets
- illustrating and decorating class work
- publishing booklets
- arranging flowers
- drawing in a variety of media e.g., pencil, crayon
- painting in a variety of media e.g., ochre, natural paints, water colour, acrylic
- making collage
- printing in a variety of media
- sewing, beading, weaving and handiwork
- modelling in a variety of media e.g., clay, papier maché.
- making masks
- digital gallery or portfolio
Resources include:
- art appreciation cards
- wall pictures
- stories about art and artists
- art supplies
- tree bark
- rocks
- plants
- shells
- ribbons
- wool
- pictures
- digital camera
＋ Links to Australian Curriculum (ACv9)
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Movement and Dance
The development and refinement of movement is an integral part of the child’s development from birth to six years of age. The ability to appreciate dance and to be able to move one’s body as a form of expression is an important facet of children’s development.
The focus on specific movements can assist children’s development in many other areas, for example whole-body coordination. Dance is also an important aspect of health and physical exercise. Young children have a natural sense of rhythm and often lack inhibition so dance comes naturally and spontaneously to them.
In the Children’s House there are many walking on the line activities that involve control and coordination of movement. The silence game involves practice in inhibition of movement and stillness of the body. Additional movement on the line activities call for increasing control when marching, running and skipping/galloping along with recognition of the rhythmical notation that calls for these kinds of movements.
Movement and Dance 1.CA.080
Knowledge, Skills and Understanding
Typically children will:
01. Develop further control of whole body movement
02. Use movement to express oneself
03. Move to music to express oneself
04. Enjoy dancing to a variety of music
＋ Materials and Activity
Activities include:
- movement games for whole body control e.g., moving and stopping to a bell, moving without touching anything, following a leader
- movement games for equilibrium e.g., walking on the line, walking, running, marching, skipping, walking with objects such as flags
- games for inhibiting movement e.g., silence game
- movement for expression e.g., free expression to music both on and off the line; marching variations; arm movements while walking on the line; moving to poetry and songs; rhythmic games; movement in ceremonies
- dramatic interpretations of, for example, a seed growing
- freeze game
- free dancing to a variety of music
- basic dance steps such as skipping, stepping, swaying and tapping
- Corroboree dances interpreting the world around them eg animals and hunting scenes
- folk dances, ethnic cultural dances, bush dances, circle dances.
- Story telling with movement
Resources include:
- an environment designed to encourage a range of movement.
＋ Links to Australian Curriculum (ACv9)
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Drama 1.CA.090
Knowledge, Skills and Understanding
Typically children will:
.01 Understand why and how humans developed drama to portray emotions and feelings
.02 Explore where and how First Nations people and other cultures used drama
.03 Begin to appreciate, create and practice the types of drama used to express oneself
.04 Consider the people who have participated in and influenced drama
＋ Materials and Activity
Activities include:
- use of whole body to perform through facial expression, voice, physical actions
- use of materials to express feelings in drama
- drama for expression e.g., free expression
- consider voice, movement, timing, cooperation
- storytelling
- Indigenous songdrama
- Dreamtime drama
- Ceremonies and totem body painting
- customs
- observe dramatic performances
- discuss plays, operas, mime, ballet etc
- stories about daily life, animals, people
- lessons on grace and courtesy as a person in the audience
- present and perform at circle time
- discuss the types of drama that children are familiar with
- roleplaying
- improvising
- games
- discuss the people that the children know that perform various types of drama, and extend with dramatic personalities in history
Resources include:
- social skills cards
- stories about drama and actors
- masks
- Cultural cards
- songlines
- attend performances
- stories about drama and actors
- masks
＋ Links to Australian Curriculum (ACv9)
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Media Arts 1.CA.100
Knowledge, Skills and Understanding
Typically children will:
.01 Explore a variety of media that tells a story
.02 Use available technologies to record and arrange images, sounds and text.
.03 Practice using available equipment such as cameras or materials for creating printed media.
.04 Explore ways to create depictions that effectively communicate ideas, concepts and stories.
.05 Explore how various forms of media can be used to communicate sentiment and perception to a large group of people.
＋ Materials and Activity
Activities include:
- Touch and name Rough & smooth
- Touch and match fabrics
- Create parts of…booklets
- Story/poetry writing and presentation.
- View picture & photographic books and discuss the stories the pictures tell.
- Create a picture story using different methods: -
- Take photos of things in the garden and create a simple photographic story/journal.
- Draw things in the garden and create a simple hand drawn picture booklet.
- Video record the classroom with students working and create a simple commentary.
- Engage with indigenous locals to watch and listen to how they tell a story about the garden, animlas or a place.
Resources include:
- Rough & smooth boards
- Fabric box
- Parts of puzzles
- Writing paper
- Digital camera
- Digital video recorder
- Garden areas
- Classroom activities
＋ Links to Australian Curriculum (ACv9)
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