Want to find out what your child will be learning in the Key Stage 1 music curriculum? We have some lesson examples and top tips to help your budding musician get ahead at home.
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In Key Stage 1 music, teaching focuses on developing a child's capacity to listen carefully and respond physically to a wide range of different kinds of music. Your child will play musical instruments and sing a variety of songs from memory, adding accompaniments and creating short compositions. Children also explore the way sounds and silence can create different moods and effects.
By the end of the Key Stage 1 curriculum, your child will be expected to have reached Level 2 in music. This national curriculum Key Stage 1 level is measured by whether he or she shows an understanding how sounds can be made, changed and organised (the sequence).
Key Stage 1 music lesson examples
A Year 1 teacher helps her class develop their listening skills by playing a variety of music shorts and asking them to write down what they hear, such as patterns and sequence in sound, changes in pitch and volume.
Year 2 children explore pitch by standing when the teacher plays the chime bar low to high, and sitting when the teacher plays high to low. They stay in the same place if a note is repeated.
Help your child at home
- Sing songs that invite your child to perform an action, such as a clap, stamp or jump, to help your child develop rhythm. Songs with repetition are particularly good.
- Make your own homemade instruments - it's fun and cheap and you can use any household object that makes a sound. It's a great way to make use of recycled objects! Here are some ideas from youthmusic.org.uk: - Fill an empty screw top jar with uncooked beans or rice to make shakers. Make sure the lid is tightly secured before use! Or try empty cartons, pots and pans make great drums when hit with a wooden spoon. You can even create a triangle by suspending a metal object such as a coat hanger with some string, and hitting it with a metal spoon.
- Talk to your child about the different sounds we associate with the weather. What sound do you hear when there is a heavy downpour, thunder, howling wind? Find words and sounds to describe them, such as rumbling thunder in a low voice, howling wind in a howling voice.
- Help your child to discover his or her voice in different ways: singing, whispering, talking, humming. Add some of the musical elements being taught at this stage: such as high, low, loud, quiet, fast, slow, rhythm.
- Expose your child to as wide a range of music as you can.
- This wacky question should invoke some creativity: what might music look like if they were painted picture? Try it out by painting a music picture.
- Play musical games togther.
- Learn to play an instrument.
