Lskm 221 taught me a lot about music, art and lessons in one content. It wasn’t easy knowing all the information but at the same time it was refreshing to learn new things.

Firstly i learned about holistic development. Holistic development essentially means the development of intellectual, mental, physical, emotional, and social abilities in a child so that he or she is capable of facing the demands and challenges of everyday life. These abilities are vitally important for success in professional fields of work.

• I Holistic education instills curiosity and develop better communication and social skills.
• Holistic approach encourage children to make connection in a subject, using their creative skills.
• Develop psychological, social, and emotional growth.
• Make learning natural and engaging.
• Motivates children to learn and know more.
• Make learning a fun and meaningful experience.

Then i also learned about listening to and responding to music

So, as has been shown through multiple studies throughout the years, music is about more than just playing an instrument. It's a means through which you can express the depths of your spirit and soul. It teaches you valuable life lessons — about persistence, endurance, perseverance, confidence, and so much more.

You can learn many things from music. You can learn empathy from instrumental tunes. You can learn how other people think and how they deal with situations that might be helpful for you. You can put yourself into different mindsets to accommodate the tasks at hand. One of the best things that music has to offer is companionship.

Then also the play music in foundation phase

Musical training helps develop language and reasoning: Students who have early musical training will develop the areas of the brain related to language and reasoning. ... Students learn to improve their work: Learning music promotes craftsmanship, and students learn to want to create good work instead of mediocre work. Music education requires students to recognize and repeat pitch, tone or enunciation of words. Especially in young children, music directly benefits the ability to learn words, speak them correctly, and process the many new sounds they hear from others. Music education involves a high level of memorization.

Arts Integration 

Art integrated classrooms can provide learning experiences that engage the learner's mind, heart and body. Here arts enable children to use multiple skills and abilities. ... The benefit of such experiential learning creates the basis for better learning in other subjects. When you’re working in an arts integration lesson, you’ll feel like the line between the content and the arts is blurred.  That’s a good thing!  In arts integration, the arts are an avenue through which students apply and connect the previously taught content.  The arts are not servicing the content.  Instead, both the content area and the arts area are interconnected.

Lesson planning

Lesson planning is the activity which the teacher performs before the actual lesson takes place. A lesson plan is a detailed description of the instructional strategies and learning activities to be performed during the teaching/learning process.An order to understand what a lesson plan is, it is important to fully understand the concept of a lesson. A lesson is a single activity or a series of activities designed by the teacher so as to achieve one or more instructional objectives determined, or desired in promoting positive change in the learner. A lesson is thus a period of instruction or contact between the teacher and the learners which is totally devoted to a prior identified, specified and single limited title, skill, content or idea.

As this journey was not easy but at the end we have to make it easy as it helps us to know a lot about us and the content of teaching. I would also like to thank Mr Lerumo for being patient with us and teach us a lot about the upcoming and challenging life experience 

The most important aspects when planning a lesson plan ?

When planning learning activities you should consider the types of activities learners  will need to engage in, in order to develop the skills and knowledge required to demonstrate effective learning in the course. Learning activities should be directly related to the learning objectives of the course, and provide experiences that will enable students to engage in, practice, and gain feedback on specific progress towards those objectives.

1) Know who your learners are. Know ability levels; backgrounds; interest levels; attention spans; ability to work together in groups; prior knowledge and learning experiences; special needs or accommodations; and learning preferences. This may not happen as quickly as you would like, but it is important for designing instruction that will meet the needs of your students. That's key in successful teaching and learning! Many activities can be used to engage learners. The activity types (i.e. what the student is doing) and their examples provided below are by no means an exhaustive list, but will help you in thinking through how best to design and deliver high impact learning experiences for your students in a typical lesson

What is your opinion about the value of utlilising arts Integration and play in foundation phase ?

arts into lessons builds social and emotional skills. Teaching through the arts encourages active play, which provides many benefits like learning to express and identify emotions, gaining feelings of confidence and control, and forming strong relationships.

Arts Integration, when done correctly, transforms both the art and the subject area into a whole greater than the sum of its parts. In short, Arts Integration can be magical, inspiring learning and setting off a spark in each child. Imagine the difference in a child’s learning experience if classroom teachers incorporated the arts into their lesson. From a teaching perspective, artistic experiences help teachers discover their students’ enthusiasm through a new medium. They also aid in creating positive and interesting lessons that fully engage the student. For the student, music not only strengthens emotional and cognitive development, but also allows a new outlet of expression, and a new means of learning through listening and making sound. The arts provide a platform through which teachers can tap into a child’s creativity and humanity while teaching content material. The arts give students an opportunity to express and explore material in a medium to which they might not otherwise have access.

•  Teaching through the arts allows educators to teach content in more than one way and gives children a range of tools and skills to demonstrate their knowledge.
• Using the arts to engage young children in learning supports equity in education. Children from low-income families, for example, gain vital early literacy and math skills when participating in early childhood programs that are active, engaging, and motivating.

Has your Perception and priorities with regards to lesson planning and the inclusion of music throughout ?

Yes because It is well recognised that music can help to develop the skills, attitudes and attributes that can support learning in other national curriculum subjects. This includes listening skills, the ability to concentrate, creativity, intuitions, aesthetic sensitivity, perseverance, the ability to work in a group, self confidence and sensitivity towards others.  

Arts Integration is an approach to teaching in which students construct and demonstrate understanding through an art form. Students engage in a creative process which connects an art form and another subject area and meets evolving objectives in both.

the arts become the approach to teaching and the vehicle for learning. Students are engaged in dual learning objectives as they engage in the creative process to explore connections between art forms and other subject areas to gain greater cross-cutting understandings. The experience is mutually reinforcing and results in deeper meaning-making in both the arts and other curricular areas. Arts-Integration requires that educators engage in professional learning about arts standards and how to authentically connect the arts to the curriculum they teach.

 •Working in the arts helps learners to develop creative problem-solving skills.

1. Teaching through the arts can present difficult concepts visually, making them more easy to understand.
2. Art instruction helps children with the development of motor skills, language skills, social skills, decision-making, risk-taking, and inventiveness.
3. Visual arts teach learners about color, layout, perspective, and balance: all techniques that are necessary in presentations (visual, digital) of academic work.
4. Integrating art with other disciplines reaches students who might not otherwise be engaged in classwork.
5. Arts experiences boost critical thinking, teaching students to take the time to be more careful and thorough in how they observe the world.
6. The arts provide challenges for learners at all levels.
7. Art education connects students with their own culture as well as with the wider world.

During music class, we wrote about the music we heard. Then, in their classroom their teacher had them write with even more detail. By the end of the year, some of those students who were struggling with writing ended up being able to develop their own ideas and had improved penmanship.Music is an extremely critical subject at schools as it leads to better brain development, increases human connection, improves grades, helps to socialise, and even lowers stress levels.

With all these benefits, try to expose your child to music as much as possible – listen to music together, sing songs, play rhythm games, go to concerts or make your own instruments together. Your local library, community centre or music society may offer music programs for kids. If your child wants to learn a musical instrument, your options may include a school music program, private music teachers, and group music activities such as choirs, recorder groups and bands.

While there can be some initial challenges to integrating music into the classroom, there are many benefits that can be gained when music is appropriately used:

• Reduces feelings of anxiety and stress.
• Helps children regulate their emotions.
• Improves concentration and on-task behavior.
• Enhances the way children can process language and speech

Music and movement enables children to learn new words and concepts through activities such as chanting rhymes, creating sounds using household items and singing songs to learn the alphabet. Many music and movement activities involve group learning, which provides children with the opportunity to enhance their social skills, practice taking turns and cooperation. This also helps children learn how to express emotions in different ways and communicate messages through actions.

Musical Concepts
Music is patterns of melody, rhythm, harmony, tempo/dynamics, and timbre combined to create repetition, variation and contrast. We use these patterns to create music and we respond emotionally and intellectually to our perceptions and interpretations of these patterns of music.

• The 6 concepts of music • Duration • Pitch • Dynamics and Expressive Techniques • Tone Colour • Texture • Structure.
• Duration The way beats are grouped: time signatures.
• Texture, intensity, quality, pitch are the basic elements of music 

The learners experience and learn music through the different kinds songs, movement and games that includes music. The learners experience in music is based on knowing the different kinds of music. At the end they use that knowledge to identify different kinds of elements in music. They can use the non-lomotor or the locomotor movements to illustrate the music concept they heard. 

The pitch in demonstrating the melodic contour learners can do that by just using their hands, and get through movements by using the meter and rhythm separately.

How do music concepts relate to life skills, mathematics and language education:

Probably the closest connection between music and math is that they both use patterns. Music has repeating choruses and sections of songs and in math patterns are used to explain and predict the unknown. Mathematics in the study of patterns, and you can study everything in music from different mathematical perspectives, including geometry, number theory, trigonometry, differential calculus, and signal processing.

Music and singing enables the speaking of English in a more relaxed and non-threatening context. The use of song picture books allows the learner to see, sing and learn the language. Music allows for the learning of language structures and words, thus improving conversational and social communication skills.

Music can help with the development of maths skills. By listening to musical beats your child can learn basic fractions, pattern-recognition and problem solving. Children who study music also have improved spatial intelligence and ability to form mental pictures of objects – skills that are important for more advanced mathematics.

The holistic development content is long and confusing it requires time and attention.

Children of all ages express themselves through music. Even young infants sway, bounce, or move their hands in response to music. Many preschoolers make up songs and, with no self-consciousness, sing to themselves as they play. Children in elementary school learn to sing together as a group and possibly learn to play a musical instrument. Older children dance to the music of their favorite bands, and use music to form friendships and share feelings. Try these activities and games with your children to experience the pleasure and learning that music brings.

Holistic development essentially means the development of intellectual, mental, physical, emotional, and social abilities in a child so that he or she is capable of facing the demands and challenges of everyday life. These abilities are vitally important for success in professional fields of work.

What i learned from the SU 1 is that it very important for learners to know music and know the aspects of music.While the learners learn the type of music they promote their holistic development in some way. The holistic development has many aspects like cognitive, physical, emotional, social and personal Development. The learners can promote activities in different ways like playing the musical instruments and dancing. The learners learn a lot in music they also develop their skills slowly but surely.

So as a teacher you have to be creative and teach your learners new things.  Like teaching the learners different kinds of music. So that they can know the different kinds of music.