Our Practical Project- Music- Creating own Instruments

What was our presentation about? Our group presentation consisted of one starter activity (grouping 10 pictures into 2 categories: Forest School and Montessori)and our main practical activity, relating to our area of provision: Music. We looked at the Forest School Framework, its history and how our main activity could be adapted to suit the outdoor environment. Also, we explored the theoretical perspectives behind our chosen area of provision, and looked into the works of Susan Isaacs, Montessori and Froebel. As a group, we decided on the area of music, as this seemed an interesting area of learning to explore and we agreed that it could be easily adapted to suit the different needs of children with SEN, visual or hearing impairments. Also, music is an activity that interests the majority of all children, and we enjoyed planning our activity too. For those of us who work in Early Years settings, we noticed that music is an area of provision that children enjoy and are eager to engage and experiment with. What was our activity? Our main activity was making our own musical instruments. We brought this activity into the presentation for the audience to participate. Each group was given a group of resources: Boxes and elastic bands, Plastic boxes, elastic bands and pasta, Bottles, pasta and elastic bands, Washing line, nuts and bolts. Each group was encouraged to make their own instrument, and to be as imaginative as possible. Each group made a variety of instruments (as can be seen in the images): Guitars (using the boxes and elastic bands), Shakers/ Drums (using the plastic boxes), Shakers/ musical bottles (using a mixture of the bottles, pasta and elastic bands), Musical washing line (that could be hung outside, using the nuts and bolts attached to the washing line), Whistle (using the nuts and bolts) Documentation of our activity: Our activity can be documented in the following ways: Observation (which could form part of the child's learning journey and could be used against development outcomes of the EYFS), Display Boards (Practitioners could create display boards in the classroom or around the setting, showing the different stages of making the musical instruments, to performing with them), Photographs (A digital representation of the activity and the children's participation- which is nice for the parents to see. Children could help to organise the photos into the different stages, so looking back on the activity and remembering what they did), and Sound Boxes (which could be used to record what children have said during the activity, practitioners can record small parts of musical performances and these can be easily added to display bords) < Reflection on activity and presentation: Upon reflection, we feel that our group presentation went really well. We appreciated the effort that the audience put into our activity and enjoyed looking at their instruments. Our feedback was really positive, both from our peers and our tutor- which we thought was really good, we were glad that everyone enjoyed the interactive presentation. If we were to conduct this presentation again, I think we have agreed that our presentation would be more in-depth in one specific area. Also, we would do a run through of the presentation before the real thing, as some of our feedback said that our ideas were somewhat confusing- so a run through would help us to better organise the structure of the presentation. Also, we think that it would have been a good idea to make our own instruments to show the audience and we could have incorporated the Forest School initiative by using natural resources to create our instruments.