Abby Straszheim March 4th MUS 463- Early childhood music class In order to observe an actual music classroom

I visited the MSU Community Music School over spring break on March 4th. I got the opportunity to observe a birth to 3-yearold music class taught by Jennifer Morgan. To begin I sat on the outside of the circle on the wall just observing. I had only observed the first, hello song before I joined the circle and started participating. Another teacher as well as a speech therapist assisted Jennifer to lead the class for the allotted 45-minute class. Jennifers patience, awareness, and ability to quickly adapt was incredible to watch. Although this class is open to kids from birth to 3, all of the students were closer to the 3-year-old mark. Therefore, the class was very active and musical. Jennifer began her class by addressing all her students individually to gather their attention. She then went through several activities using different instruments not spending more than 10 minutes on one activity. This kept the students engaged and active. Throughout the class she used a variety of songs and chants. For some students, they enjoyed and engaged with the songs more whereas some students concentrated more with the chants. She was using lots and lots of flow to get the students moving and applying music to their random movements. One of the particularly favorite activities of the students was the big drum activity. First Jennifer had all the students keep a macro beat to her song with their hands. Then with 2 kids at a time she had them play the macro beat on the drum with her while she sang her song. All of the students seemed to really enjoy this even when they werent playing the drum. Several were able to keep that macro beat on the drum as well, which was exciting.

For a majority of the class Jennifer seemed to focus mostly on the rhythm element of music as well as movement. The students reacted well to the beanbag activity as well. Her assistant Charlie placed the beanbag on a certain body part and sang his song while using space and flow. The students seemed to respond well with this activity as well as requesting different places to put the beanbag. I did observe as he sang his song with the words, the students seemed to be distracted more. Keeping the songs and chants without words while working with a prop or instrument was definitely more affective. Overall, Jennifer was very impressive to watch. She always appeared to have a plan but not a very concrete plan. For one activity as the students were all standing up by the walls she turned her sitting down activity to an activity on the walls. She was obviously alert to her students and it was fun to watch her go with the flow of the class. If she was singing to one student encouraging that student to respond back to her and they didnt, she would move on to a student who was interested in responding. While we were chatting afterwards, she also mentioned that with this class in particular, almost all of the students respond very well and can copy her song as well as predict the endings of her song or chants but often get too distracted. Not only were there a couple of students with very little attention span she also had some students with speech impairments and social developmental issues. However, had I not known that, I would have had a hard time really picking out who those particular students were. Jennifers music class really seemed to appeal to a broad range of students. All of her students are in same stage of music babble however, her students did stay engaged throughout the entirety of her class as she continued to switch up activities, songs, and props.