INTEGRATION OF PLAY AND MUSIC IN PRE-PRIMARY EDUCATION SYLLABUS

Question: Why play and music are integrated in pre-primary education syllabus?

INTRODUCTION

The question need to give out the necessarily of integrating play and music in pre-primary school, that influenced with their significance functions to pre-primary aged children.

Pre- primary education is the initial stage of organized instruction designed primarily to introduce very young children to a school type environment. This stage comprised kindergarten and nursery classes upon accomplishing of these stage children continue their education at the next stage (primary education), (eng.uvm.dk/education/pre-primary-education).

Pre-primary education is the first formed level in the education system in Tanzania catering for children aged five to six years old. According to education and training policy (ETP) (1995), pre primary education is intended to promote the overall personality development of a child his or her physical, mental, moral and social characteristics and capabilities (www.moe.go.tz).

Syllabus is the document that a professor write and distribute to provide students with an over view of college course (homeworktips.about.com/od/preparing for college/qt/syllabus.htm).

Syllabus is a list of topic or books that will be studied in a course (www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/syllabus).

Music is the imaginative process of creating, performing and responding to sound and silence for personal and collective meaning.(David.H.Thomas,(Dec,16,2010) Buzzing Reed-Breathing clarinet and classical music for all, retrived from blog.davidthornas.net/2010/12/what-is-the meaning-of –music-especially-classical-music-what-is-its-values/)

Music is the art of arranging sounds in tone so as to produce a continuoces, unified, and evocative composition, as through melody, harmony,rhythm and timbre (www.thefreedictionary.com/-/diet.aspx?rd=1&word=music).

Play is a varied and rich medium for learning in which children interacting with the environment and with each other, for instance toddlers slipping down a little slide, wrestling and rolling on the rug, and then climbing back up the slide (Gonzalez-Mena, 2001). Gonzalez- Mena describe that children are gaining physical skills as well as social skills as they learn how they can be rough and yet not hurt each other. Play is educational for young children, including school-age children. Frost (1992) concurred, stating that “playing is the chief vehicle for the development of imagination and intelligence, language, social skills, and perceptual-motor abilities in infants and young children. Furthermore, Garvey (1977) states that play are most common during childhood when children’s knowledge of self, comprehension of verbal and non-verbal communication, and understanding of the physical and social worlds are expanding dramatically.

Children use fine and gross motor skills in their play, react to each other socially, think about what they are doing or going to do, use language to talk to each other or to themselves and they very often respond emotionally to the play activities (Gonzalez-Mena, 2001).

INTEGRATION OF MUSIC IN PRE PRIMARY SCHOOL SYLLABUS

According to Garder (1993) argue that the earliest intelligence to emerge is musical, since a child first exposed to music in the womb, hearing the repeated rhythm of the mother’s heartbeat. For this reason, children including infants are naturally guided through their inner kinesthetic sense to move to basic beats and rhythms, and as they grow older these natural desire increases (Bayless and Ramsey,1991)

Cornett (2003), Music is an important part of our lives and an intrinsic part of children’s play. As children grow and develop, their musical involvement widens through opportunities for moving, listening, creating and singing.

FUNCTIONS OF MUSIC IN PRE PRIMARY SCHOOL

Music has a great contribution in child’s development and it involves the following functions in pre primary schools that brought necessarily to be integrated in pre-primary syllabus:

·         Singing and listening to nursery songs, folk songs and jingles extended and develop vocabulary and comprehension skills (Bayless and Ramsey,1991; Chandler,1999;Morrow,2001). Learning through music build listening skills.

·         Learning through music enhance the child’s abstract thinking, for example when the child retrieves lyrics out of reading made him or her undergoing abstract thinking toward the song desired to sing. In other hand, learning through music improves memorization ability of the child.

·         Music encourages the use of compound words, rhymes and images; for example the proper use of language in terms of pronunciation that is proper use of words.

·         Integrating music into daily activities allows teachers to meet the needs of students reading out varied level. Wolverton (1990), argue that effective interrogation of music and literacy creates an environment in which children can enjoy gaining specific academic skills.

Cornett (2003) recommends the reasons for interrogating music into curriculum of pre-primary schools by giving the following  reasons:

•   music is a learning vehicles,

•   Music unit effective, cognitive and psychomotor domains.

•   Music solves problems.

•   Music bonds people.

•   Music increases creativity, sensitivity and self discipline.

•  Music gives aesthetic enjoyment.

·         Learning through music enhances literacy skills of creative expression, phonemic awareness, and creative writing skills phonemic awareness is noticing that speech in built from sounds (Yopp and Yopp, 2000). To develop an awareness of speech sound children need opportunities to identify beginning and ending sounds, substitutes ne sound for another, and manipulate sounds. Therefore phonemic awareness activities involving music should be interactive, stimulating and developmentally appropriate (Morrow,2001).

INTEGRATION OF PLAY IN PRE- PRIMARY SCHOOLSYLLABUS.

Omary (2011) argue that, play is often associated with children, amusement, leisure, idling, voluntary activity and basically for children. In fact, plays are often designated as extra-curriculum although the current thinking is that they should be regarded as co-curriculum rather than extra curriculum (Shehu, 2002).

The sight of plays is quite common in our everyday life both in schools and outside the school; one can see children play either spontaneously or in an organized manner. It includes individual and group plays, competitive and non competitive plays and the variety of values and benefits that plays give (Smith, 1962 as cited by Omari, 2011). Think of children or even adult singing, modeling play, painting, play with toys, running in rings and circles or doing rope jumping. In most plays always have implicit reciprocal expectations that each child will be reasonable, charitable, and friendly so that people can enjoy what they are doing (Omari, 2011).

According to Covington (1971), give two basic inborn human tendencies, which are; curiosity and the will to learn. In curiosity, even before birth, kids respond to environmental stimulation such as different amounts of sound and heat. After birth curiosity naturally expands dramatically as the child explores the environment with eyes, ears, skin, tongue and nose. One can see such exploratory activities among young children such as playing with toys, milkbottle,mamas eyes, nose, teeth, kicking legs and stretching arms and fingers.

In the will to learn, For survival purposes, human being are born to be conquerers of their environment, just like other creatures striving to make a living on earth. Similarly, the wish to be on top, to be fit, to be balanced, to be plose  to layful, are all very natural tendencies.

TYPES OF PLAY IN CHILDHOOD

Gonzalez-Mena (2001) categories the forms of children play into six types as proposed by Mildred Parten who is the proponent on types of children’s play. These types are as follows;

·         Sensorimotor Play;  Sometimes called ‘practice play’ or functional play, starts with the infant interacting with his or her environment using both objects and humans. It involves making things happen and imitating, for example, holding a telephones receiver to the ear, and for older children the sensorimotor play include fiddling with things, doodling with pencils, roughhousing, and playing pointless chase games.

·         Symbolic play; another category of play is symbolic play which involves make-believe. There are three kinds of symbolic play: dramatic play, constructive play, and games with rules. In this symbolic play children use objects to pretend.

      Dramatic play is a common type of symbolic play. You can visit most any preschool an     see children in the dramatic-play corner acting out various parts: “I will be the mommy.     You be the baby”.

Constructive play involves building structures with blocks. This involves symbolic thinking and even fantasy, as children create an image in their minds of what they are building. Children often use play dough and paint, example when she makes a play dough birthday cake for her teachers, she is engaged in constructive play.

Games with rules require an understanding of predetermined structures and an ability to use strategy. Group or circle games like ring-around the rosy and older children are able to play with variety complex rules and strategies, including card games, board games and sports.

·         Solitary Play in which child playing by oneself, has some benefits as: some children need to be by themselves to explore their own thoughts and feelings; some need to get away from excess stimulation to focus and some just like their own company.

·         Parallel play; is common among toddlers but occur at all ages, children playing parallel to each other sometimes use each other’s toys, but always maintain their independence.

·         Associative Play; involves children interacting in a loosely organized fashion, such as working on a craft project side-by-side. The children associate with each other in a give-and-take way; they carry on conservations and pay attention to each other.

·         Cooperative Play; involves a significant degree of organization, it’s when children organize themselves into roles with specific goals in mind. Example; daddy and mommy play, football play e.t.c.

FUNCTIONS OF PLAY IN PRE PRIMARY SCHOOL

Play contributes a great role in the syllabus of pre-primary education. The function of the family and schools as institutions then is to try to fortify them, preserve them and strengthen them and finally develop, energize and supplement them in playful manner (Omary, 2011). At age 2 to about 7 years, children just play with any object, like sand, water, toys, and other objects.

The task for teachers and parent is that of facilitating the merging of spontaneous play, freedom to play and pleasurable activities as organized school environment (Omary, 2011).

Ogundare (2002) argue that, while the benefits of games and plays may vary from one type of game to another, and the age and health of the benefits, but it fall in four domains as follows;

·         Cognitive benefits; there is tremendous cognitive or mental work in most plays and games associated with classification, aiming, coordination, tactics and manipulation. When children move about their natural and artificial, environments, they come into contact with objects, lift and hold them, sort them out and classify them according to certain attributes, for instance, they begin to recognize similarities, differences, overlaps and dimensions of extensions, they learn that a dog is also an animal that eat meat and a car toy can be made of wood, metals, grass, leaves and stores(Ogundare, 2002). Gonzalez-Mena (2001) depict that, play helps children practice meaning-making in which they learn or build knowledge by finding meaning in their experience instead of by passively receiving information from their teacher. Using play as important learning activities also helps children manage themselves, instead of depending on the teacher (Gonzalez-Mena, 2001).

·         Affective benefits; More than any other area, games and plays have tremendous affective and social benefits associated with. When the children are able to dance, to score a goal, sing in choir group and then children could be able to develop self concept and image (Ogundare, 2002).

Also plays provides opportunity to children interpersonal skills of observing rules, being polite, learning to take and give, loosing and winning, being helpful to others and fitting into a team as a productive and appreciated team member. Example of plays is pata potea and playing cards (Omary, 2011). Omary (2011) add that, plays help children in making friends and taking up leadership positions in a variety of games and play such as choir group or football team, many world leaders started that way.

·         Organic benefits; it is now self evident in the medical and health fields that plays, games and sports, including physical exercises are essential for the well functioning of some key organs for child as: the heart pumping of blood throughout the body, lung pumping air to the appropriate part of the body, pituitary glands for the release of adrenaline for balanced and appropriate emotions for their moods i.e. happiness and anger and also our excretive organs, including kidney, require physical activities to function well (Ogundare, 2002).

·         Physical benefits; plays helps children in the development of body muscles, strengthen the tendons and joints; exercise all parts of the body apparatus and movements.

·         Also play helps children to be trained for responsibility; in which is highly associated with chance games, where children are getting trained to accept the consequences of their behaviors in its nice combined with strong ego, mental foresight and strategies thinking (Ogundare 2002).

Play help the children in social integration of the individual into the larger social unites ie social intelligence, gravitating on interpersonal skills development. Learning future roles, symbolism in play enables the child to practice life-red or imagined (Ogundare, 2002). The symbolism can act as a proxy, a preparatory stage for life to come and anticipate what given a chance, the child could practice. For instance, imagine when a child plays doctor, with a stethoscope, motherhood with dolls coddling them plays team captain.

Generally the role of the adult, community and especially teachers is to bring these dreams close to realities through role play. This can be done through pictures, drama, stories and mimicry and here one can concentrate on positive role that focus on service and the well fare of others.

                                     REFERENCES

Bayless, K.M., & Ramsey, M.E, (1991) Music: A way of life for the young child (4^th edtn). New York: Merril

Chandler, K (1999) Home literacy activities and signs of children’s emerging literacy. Retrieved   from www.nces.ed.gov .

Cornett, C.E (2001) Creating meaning through literature and the arts. Upper Saddle River, NJ:    Merril- Prentice Hall.

Gardner, H (1993) Frames of Mind: The theory of multiple intelligences (2^nd edtn). New York:     Basic.

Gonzalez-Mena, J (2001) Foundations. Early Childhood Education in Diverse Society, (2^nd edt).   New York: McGraw-Hill.

Moss. G, Swimm. T, Gross. D, Sholl. P, an Laidroo, I (2006), Early childhood and Elementary                                  Literacy.  Article 26; Music, Rhythm and Rhyme Enhance children’s literacy skill.             Annual Editions. Mc Graw Hill. New York.

Morrow, L.M (2001) Literacy developmentin the early years: Helping children read and write       (4^th edt). Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

Omari. I.M, (2011). Educational psychology for Teachers Dar es salaam. Oxford university                      Press (T) Ltd.

Wolverton, V. D (1990) Facilitating language acquisition through music. Up-date 9:24-30

Yopp, H.K., & Yopp, R.H, (2000) Supporting phonemic awareness development in the     classroom. The Reading Teacher 51: 130-33

Earlychildhood news www.earlychildhoodnews/earlchildhood/article-view. aspx? Article ID= 453 play support children’s learning throughout the domains.

TABLE OF CONTENT

    INTRODUCTION

       Definitions of various terms

      Pre primary education

      Syllabus

      Music

      Play

     Types of play in childhood

   MAIN BODY

     Integration of music and play in pre-primary school syllabus;

      Function of music to pre-primary children

      Function of play to pre-primary children

   CONCLUSION

   REFERENCES