Something a little light-hearted for Friday... every week the Guardian newspaper has a column called Readers Recommend..., where readers are invited to send in suggestions for their favourite songs on a particular subject. This week the chosen topic is children's songs, and while I can't pretend to be familiar with all of the final list, it certainly looks like an interesting selection if you're searching for music that a child might enjoy. Here's the article in full.
Strangely the list contains no AC/DC, who my four year old niece claims are her favourite band...
Have a look at the videos below for some more ideas on music for children. The first is from an album called Now the Day is Over, a collection of lullabies released by an American band called The Innocence Mission; the second is from a 1970s series with the fabulous title Schoolhouse Rock!, and introduces children to the joys of the three times table.
Do you have any songs that you would recommend for children? If so, leave a comment below to share them with other readers. Here's how to do it.
4 comments:
Very interesting. I was actually reading off the previous blog that asked for recommendations. I'm looking for resources to get a grip of children's songs and how it's been taught through families and schools in the UK. Would you mind sharing some info if you know of any? =)
Hi Bini
Glad you found the post useful. It's a little more light-hearted than the material I usually post on here, but it did give me an excuse to inflict my musical tastes on the site's readers with the two videos... :-)
In answer to your question, you've picked a very good time to ask, as only last month the Department of Education published a review into Music Education in England, which can be found here: http://tinyurl.com/5rlgcym
As a result, the government is promising additional funding for music education, and a national plan for music education later this year: http://tinyurl.com/62ctwda
With regards to how songs are being taught, the Teaching Expertise website has a lot of articles on different aspects of music in the classroom - http://www.teachingexpertise.com/topic/music-classroom . The TES site is also full of articles on this topic - http://tinyurl.com/6d9vbvf - and has a wide selection of practical resources which you can use within a classroom - http://tinyurl.com/66ztwpw (you'll need to register with the site to access these but this is free and only takes a minute).
Teachers TV has 46 different videos dealing with different aspects of music education at Key Stages 1 & 2 - http://www.teachers.tv/subjects/primary/music .
And for suggestions for further resources, a similar request to yours was logged on the TTRB website - you can read what resources their librarian suggested for further reading from this link: http://tinyurl.com/6gf7zj3
If you'd like to relax after all that reading, take a look at the funkykidzmusic channel on YouTube; it's not 'academic', but is a lot of fun! - http://www.youtube.com/user/funkykidzmusic
Best of luck!
David
Hi David,
Have long recommended your blog to colleagues of mine at www.leyf.org.uk - and this particular post is just up my street (not least as you had a video of one of my all time favourite bands in the Innocence Mission), so thanks for that and all your other great info/links!
Glad you're finding it useful. I could talk about the Innocence Mission for hours, but this is neither the time or place :-)
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