I would never have thought that this was a  short week this week at work because it definitely was a busy one! I have definitely used this weekend to catch up on odds and ends and hopefully I will see the top of the mountain soon!

I would say that I am somewhat confident in teaching music in Grade R but I have not had any experience with teaching it in the other grades. The Primary school that I did work in at one stage in the past had their own music teacher so this meant that the children would go there for lessons and it was not the class teachers responsibility to teach them music. When it comes to integrating music into my class I think I am a lot more confident than just teaching music practically. I love music and think that involving it into everyday lessons makes it a lot more fun and exciting for the children. It does not only mean that one needs to have it as part of the lesson part but I often play soft relaxing classical music to my children while they are working and they really do enjoy it and helps them focus more on the task at hand.

If I had to choose between music or physical education, I do think that this would be a difficult choice. On one hand the children these days don’t always get the exercise that they need and therefore could really benefit from physical education classes. I do think that I would eventually choose music for a number of reasons.

• I could still involve movement into their daily routine through music, both fast and slow more calming mediations.
• The songs I choose could help with language development, learning of sounds as well as other concepts.
• Music has been proven to help the brain develop and help the children develop intellectually
• Music and songs can be used in many different sections of a lesson
  • Introduction – to create interest
  • Brain breaks – when children have been working for a while and need time to move and stretch in order to help with concentration.
  • Between different lessons – especially if the children are not moving to a different class. It can be used to indicated that one lesson is over and we are now moving into another lesson on a different subject.