Hello my fellow bloggers,

I can’t believe another week is over, where does the time go?!?

I am not sure how most of you have been feeling but if you have been trying to keep your head above water with your workload, don’t’ fear, this is exactly how I have been feeling too. Juggling work and family life is a task in itself and to chuck all the varsity work into the mix makes it quite stressful at times. I am sure we will get through the semester successfully together by taking one day at a time.

It is incredible to see how influential the likes of Piaget, Erikson and Vygotsky’s theories have had in different fields within education as their names come up in nearly every subject that I have done so far. When you think of children doing music you don’t really think beyond the fact that it is a fun activity for them to do. However, there is ‘method to the madness’ as they say. What I have learnt is that all of the activities that are done in music helps with their physical, emotional, personal, cognitive and social development, it is only now after working through this study unit that it has become even more clear to me how important music is in the holistic development of a child in the foundation phase.

Individual reflection

1. I personally love music however, it is not something that I have ever had to teach so I am not very confident in this field. I am lucky enough to attend music lessons at the school that I am an intern at and I am definitely learning a few things from the music teacher. What I have noticed is that teachers will put music on in the classroom when they can see that their learners are losing focus on work, this breaks up the routine slightly and injects some enthusiasm back into them as they get a chance to move around and ‘shake their silly’s out’. It is nice to see what a positive impact music has on learners.

2. Choosing between music and physical education would be a very difficult choice to make because both of these are  important to a learners holistic development. Unfortunately, these days children don’t always get the exercise they need as a lot of time is spent indoors enjoying too much screen time. However, if I had to choose between the two then music education is the one that I would incorporate into the foundation phase curriculum. The reason for this choice is because you can incorporate lots of movement into a music lesson e.g. running, skipping, walking, balancing, dancing etc. this would be a good alternative in replacing physical education.  Music has many benefits but to name a few it develops fine and gross motor skills, it improves listening, helps with memorization and can expand learners vocabulary, it can also change the mood of a learner from feeling sad to happy.