Overall this has been an exciting journey for me and I mostly enjoyed it. Blogging is a new thing for me and I was definitely out of my comfort zone with these blog entries. 

This subject has taught me a lot of important and interesting things that will certainly help me to be a better teacher who is well planned and well prepared for each lesson. 

There are much more to music in education than I initially thought when the semester started and working through all the study units was quite an eye opener for me. 

It is easy to think inside of your own personal framework and refer to things the way you understand them, but to teach something that you don't have much training in could be a scary thought, but luckily we all have some wonderful guidelines now to help us in being the best possible teachers for a bright future.

Study unit 5 is all about planning a music lesson. It was a really interesting study unit for me and I think it is a very important one as well, because if you don’t plan well, your lesson could easily be a complete failure.

An important thing to remember in all subjects when planning a lesson is to always refer back to the CAPS document to make sure that all you need is taken care of in your lesson. To be sure not to leave anything out and to only explain up to where your specific age group will understand.

I enjoyed working through this unit, because even though I love music, I did not really know how to teach it or set up a good lesson plan, which I now do.

Lesson planning is not an easy thing for me and therefor this study unit will be good to refer back to when I sit with my empty lesson plan in front of me next time.

In this study unit, we learned about art integration. I see art as a very abstract subject, because what one person sees as beautiful, another sees as weird. We as teachers should embrace the unique concepts that the learners make and encourage them to keep on expressing themselves through art. Music is always combined with another subject such as language, math or life skills. Personally I like to use it in Life Skills, but it could also be very helpful in languages when we learn things like new sounds, because they remember the song which helps them to remember the sounds.

Music is an exciting part of everyday life and all people like it, so if we could incorporate musical arts into our classes, the learners will have more fun during the lessons and hopefully remember it for longer.

I am reminded more and more as I work through this study unit how much we could use art in a classroom and that has me excited as well as anxious for my own class one day. I am excited, because I know there can be great benefits to this and I am anxious because of the few learners who cannot concentrate with these types of environments.

For now, however, I will choose to stay positive and look for the good outcomes that it can bring.

This study unit focused on the teaching of musical play in the foundation phase. Musical play is an important part of Life Skills and most learners tend to enjoy Life Skills and do quite well. When learners learn through playing games, they learn without realizing that they are learning, which they can benefit from in daily life.

Games have rules and if you don’t abide by the rules, you cannot play they game. Whether children wants to know it or not, they need structure and rules in their lives. Some learners cannot concentrate without structure and others tend to love chaos and through playing games, they learn to have a little bit of both, which helps learners to see the other’s needs as well.

Last year during the COVID 19 National Lockdown, our learners could not go to school and many of them did not play during this time. Instead of playing, they sat in front of television screens or tablets and cellphones. This is due to the fact that many people don’t have the finances to have lots of toys or a big enough yard to play in and thus they had to stay inside and their few toys could easily bore them over time.

Sometimes children play, but their game seems to be work to us who are not playing along. They could easily spend hours gathering rocks to build a racing track and cleaning up the area where they want the track to be. On the other hand, if we would have asked them to clean an area for us or gather rocks, they would have seen it as work. This is because the difference between play and work is that they choose what they want to do when they play, but we decide what they have to do and they have no say when it is work.

Playing requires you to actively take part. No matter how relaxed your game/ activity is, you have to do something in order for it to take place and go on. Some games have objects or instruments that you use in order to play and using these objects can help a child to develop fine motor skills which is very important to establish early on in their life.

Fantasy play is a very important part of a child’s life. They would then use their imagination and pretend to be in different situations. This could help children to cope with difficult situations in their life.

As teachers and parents, we should always encourage our children and learners to play as much as possible and we should try and play with them as much as we can.

In a classroom, whether it is a mainstream school or a private school or even a school for learners with special needs, learners face different challenges in learning. To some of these learners, music can be wonderful and help them and other learners may not benefit from music education at all. Music combines all our senses and that makes it accessible to basically everyone. People who learn trough sound can benefit from music by listening to recordings of music or even live versions of music. People who struggle with communicating about their feelings usually express themselves through music and they are lots of times gifted musicians.

Some people flourish on routine and music can provide a sense of structure for them as there are patterns in music and you as artist manipulate those patterns to please you. Music can accommodate everyone, because for every personality, there are different things in music to explore, whether that is a different genre or different instrument, there will be something that you like and relate with.

 There are different elements in music and it could be a good way to teach learners about the differences in personalities of people, because every person is unique and different and so is every song as well.

Personally I love music and my violin is my best friend. I can play slow and sad songs when I’m feeling blue or change it up and play happy and lively songs when I’m happy. An orchestra is made up of string instruments, percussion instruments, brass instruments and woodwinds.

The different elements of music can play a key part in daily life and I strongly believe that if all children did a form of music at school, they would handle every day situations better and easier.