Hi everyone, guess I am back with the blog. The week has just started and I feel depleted already. This week has been a lot, assignments after assignments, due dates and my personal life, planning my sons first birthday party became overwhelming. I hope everyone is still doing well and keeping safe.

Study unit 3 was a very interesting chapter and I learned a lot more than I thought I would. I never knew how much musical play affected students in the foundation phase. We learnt about the genres od plays and games and it gave us different examples of plays. With my current knowledge and becoming aware of the seven elements of a play was probably the most shocking thing to me. Previously, I thought that a play was just a school production that schools did to raise funds and include some fun time for the kids. Although, this study unit and the seven elements made me aware that a musical play means a lot more. Music is a broad topic, and it has many benefits in many situations.

Personally, I feel as though learners could’ve gotten very uncomfortable during the different activities, such as the Zulu stone passing game, not every student understands and speaks the language that the game is being played in. The game is also very insensitive to many children’s home lives as not everyone knows the children’s different situations. Many children may not have a father figure in their households, especially because the song ‘bhombela’ is about transporting fathers to and from the busy cities where they work and returning with gifts for their children. Many fathers may not be able to do that because of their financial situations.

Other examples of the uncomfortableness that the students felt are:

• The boy who didn’t understand the Zulu song.
• A girl that felt uncomfortable dancing in front of the boys due to religious reasons.

This can be corrected by making use of more than one song so that all the children are able to feel included. We could separate the boys and the girls into different groups so that they don’t feel uncomfortable in front of the others. The learner’s opinion is also important to find out what they enjoy.

This study unit was extremely informative and I really enjoyed learning as much as I did.

Stay safe and I hope to hear from you all soon.

Until next time.