Thank you for purchasing this Poster and CD set.

There are many educational values to music and the use of musical instruments.

This CD and poster set can help you in a number of ways. For a start, you will be able to show the children a number of different instruments and they will be able to listen to the sounds that they make. You may own some of the instruments which is the best alternative but by having posters also you are showing the children the importance that you place on musical instruments by having them displayed around your centre.

From experience, there are not many musical instrument posters available on the market and the ones available show mainly orchestral instruments usually out of context. These posters show children playing instruments, and the choice of instruments are those that children are able to play and enjoy whilst making music.

Contained on the CD is a variety of information that you will be able to use about the musical instruments. Some of it is designed to use with your computer and others parts to play on a CD player.
The following is available;

Posters of musical instruments.
The sounds of each instrument.
Pictures of instruments that will be printable with your computer.
Video of how to play them.
Song sound samples using some of the instruments.
Information about the cultural heritage of the instruments.
Sounds of other instruments pictured in the information script.
Introduction to making some of the instruments.
Internet sites of interest about instruments.
Other resources you might find helpful.

Making and using instruments can provide a multitude of different learning experiences.

Perhaps the most important thing about music in early childhood is to have fun and don't limit the experience. There are so many games and activities in relation to music education already in existence, so all you have to do is select those you want to use. You can create your own as well, which is even more fun.

Make music an everyday part of life. In many cultures, it is just that, we have moved away from the social interactive aspects and have become isolated. We just listen to our radios instead. Or worse still, TVs.

It is not necessarily important for the children to part-take in all activities, as some of them would be too difficult for some ages. Nevertheless, this doesn't mean you should not do these activities.

As the children watch you, there are learning processes taking place. They learn by watching and listening as well as doing. An example is the way that children learn to walk and talk, you do not physically have to show them either process, they learn from their environment and by seeing and hearing how it is done. By the correct example, you can lay the foundations for many other things. Sometimes when these foundations are incorrectly laid some learning processes can not proceed, or are more difficult to learn. I am sure you all can think of examples and not just relating to early childhood. As it is said, " you learn from experience", and by watching others.

Don't be limited by having to think that the children need to participate in everything, sometimes they can be your helpers and they will still learn. You will know which activities would be suited for each age group.

Instrument making and playing is good for the development of both the gross and fine motor skills on a number of different levels. Like most things, the more you do the easier it becomes and the better you get. The activities in relation to either of these, is virtually limitless so be imaginative and have some fun with the children.

Some of the activities the children may be involved in are cutting, sawing, gluing, weaving, threading, tuning, collecting, listening to and playing the instruments. All these activities involve motor skills and eye hand co-ordination. They involve listening skills and the judgment of whether some things sound good or not as good as others.

Listening to the various sounds produced from instruments, and during the making, is educating the children's hearing.

If children are limited in their experience, they have nothing to base their judgements on.

An example is how foreign some music sounds to us, even to the extent of saying that you can not continue with listening to it. The cause is usually that the scales are different to our western scale and our hearing is not use to it. This can easily be changed by listening to that type of music. Gradually your hearing adjusts to the scales and you start to recognise the music, making it more pleasant to listen to.

The children today have easy access to many cultural experiences that were not as readily available forty years ago. I hope that these experiences will enable the children to have more understanding through knowledge. By learning and experiencing, at least they will then be able to make an educated decision rather than one based on little or no knowledge and misunderstandings.

Sounds can vary in volume, pitch and tempo and these factors the children love to explore whist participating in music. While making instruments some materials resonate better and sustain their note for longer periods. You can explore the sounds made by differing materials and even different sizes of the same materials.

An example would be to rub your scrapper with a stick, a thick piece of wire, and a thin piece of wire or with something soft. Thickness of the notches and the rubbing object would also effect the sound. All of these would produce differing sounds that the children could easily differentiate. You may find some children prefer one sound to another.

With water drums, volume comes into play, effecting the sounds produced. All of these differences are a part of the natural physics involved and while the children explore the possibilities they are learning. You don't have to explain every little detail of what is happening, the children will learn by their own observation. However, you do need to give these learning experiences to the children and they are fun to explore as they learn.

You can even combine agriculture with music making by growing your own gourds. What a great experience for the children to grow their own materials for making instruments. They can learn about the difficulties involved in growing and drying and the smells as they de-seed clean the gourds. They can then plant the new seeds for the next children.

As you can see music and instrument making opens many fields of education for you to explore with the children. What I hope you will achieve by using these posters and CD is that you will start to explore this wonderful world of musical instruments. I have given you some ideas that I hope you will be able to expand upon and use in everyday education.

I hope that you will utilise this resource and its ideas. I am glad to help with any questions or problems if you contact me.

Again, I thank you.

Kind Regards,

James Corr.