Hello everyone! I hope you are safe and you are doing great. 

This week felt so long and It feels like the time flies and not much is getting done. I am excited that we officially started with our studies but everything still feels a little bit overwhelming.

During this week I have been working hard through study unit 1 and it is really interesting to learn about the theories and to learn more about music in the developmental stages. The three theories that I learned about is Erikson's theory, Piaget's theory and Vygotsky's zone of proximal development. 

Now let's start answering some questions about this module!

1. Explain your understanding of Vygotsky's zone of proximal development.

What I understand from Vygotsky's zone of proximal development is that social interaction is so important for the cognitive development of a child. It is also important that an adult or peer is part of the learning process of the child.

2. Summarize the most important aspects of the learning theories of Erikson, Piaget and Vygotsky for your teaching practice as foundation phase teacher.

Erikson - The most important aspect for me is that relationships and social interaction is really important, it influence the child's learning. It is so important for a teacher to build a healthy relationship with a child and enable a child to interact with peers.  It is so important to show a child that they are important, loved, cared for and it is most important to praise each child in the classroom. 

Piaget - The most important aspects of Piaget's theory is the stages of the theory. It is also important to use the child's existing knowledge with new knowledge.

Vygotsky- The most important aspect of Vygotsky is the influence that socio-cultural factors have on cognitive development. For a teacher it is so important to know in which social environment a child grows up and what influence it has on the cognitive development of the child. If a teacher knows this, it can be easier to understand what learning needs a child have. This theory would definitely be helpful in the classroom. 

3. Reflect on your newly gained knowledge of learning theories and holistic development and create a mind map in which you outline the most important aspects of holistic development in the foundation phase. 

The theories is really important to use in the classroom especially to understand a child and to support each child in every developmental stage. 

 Most important aspects of holistic development:

• Intellectual ability
• Mental ability
• Emotional ability
• Social ability

4. Why is it important to have basic knowledge about the musical development of foundation phase learners?

It is so important for a teacher to have basic knowledge of music. Music have many benefits for children and many benefits for learning in the classroom. Music helps learners to learn important things in a fun way. Sometimes learners get distracted and bored in the classroom and music can help them to learn in a fun way. Music is very important to help the children to develop.  Music is so important for attentiveness, multitasking and it helps with numeracy and literacy. 

5. Create suggestions for music activities which will support the various developmental areas of foundation phase learners. Formulate at least three music activities that could support and promote each developmental area.

• Always have music instruments in the classroom to learn rhymes
• Let the learners work together in groups with instruments to make a song about a theme.
• Play sounds to the learners and let them draw what they hear. 

6. Write a short critique about the implications of knowledge about learning theories such as those Erikson, Piaget and Vygotsky with regards to the way in which this knowledge informs your teaching approach as well as the way you approach activity planning.

All of these theories is in a way important to teach and it can help a lot for activity planning because it can be seen as somewhat guidelines to help you plan for each child that develops in a different way. 

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This was an interesting study unit and would love to learn more about music and how it helps with the development of a child. 

I am not that confident as I am supposed to be with music in foundation phase but I am sure that as soon as we learn more about using music my confidence will build up. It is so important for me that we incorporate music education and physical education in the foundation phase, both is so important and play different roles in the development of a child. 

I know we are going to learn a lot more about music in the following weeks and I am so excited to learn more!

I hope you all have a great week and stay safe!