Good day fellow bloggers   

This is what I understood under study unit 1:

Erikson’s stages of psychosocial development:

the influence of social interaction and relationships on learning, children develop a sense of pride in their accomplishments and abilities through social interaction and relationships thus they strongly rely on feedback from peers, teachers and parents to feel proud and confident about their abilities and achievements. If children do not experience encouragement and praise for their successes during this stage of their development, they might consequently experience self-doubt and low self-esteem.

Piaget’s cognitive development theory:

1-Pre-operational stage

2-Concrete operational stage

Vygotsky and the zone of proximal development:

According to Vygotsky, one cannot fully understand a child’s learning needs and developmental stage without taking their social environment as well as the influence of social factors on a personal level into consideration, the zone of proximal development draws attention to the potential that a learner has to master new skills or successfully solve a problem through teacher and peer scaffolding.

Musical development in the foundation phase:

Children also develop other abilities during middle childhood. In terms of specific skills, children's sense of tonality increases, along with the ability to more accurately match pitch (Kenney, 1997).Research suggests that some musical abilities (i.e., rhythm and singing abilities) are developed to adult-like non-musician levels by ages 7 to 8 (Gembris, 2006; Reifinger, 2006).

Music and the holistic development of foundation phase learners:

1-Physical development-music activities, especially moving to music (dancing) and playing instruments promotes physical development.

2-Cognitive development-music activities where learners have to improvise, create their own body percussion patterns or make their own instruments, learners learn to solve problems and think creatively.

3-Social development-through engagement in these activities, foundation phase learners also learn about taking turns, respecting others’ opinions and feelings and how to deal with conflict while improving their communication skills and learning about socially behaviour.

4-Personal development-experience success in music education when they are able to successfully participate in music activities with peers, make their own instruments, take part in singing or dancing activities and create and perform their own body percussion patterns.

5-Emotional development-by moving freely according to how music makes them feel, they also learn to express these emotions provoked by music which in turn supports them in learning to identify and express their own emotions appropriately.