Assessment 3-A Day at Beach. by shafana m

Sound/ Music Activity Experience: Sounds of Nature.

shafanaam — 2024-04-13 12:38:43 UTC

Summary:

In Assessment 2, I have chosen my evening walk at the beach video for creative response. I shared the experience with my children to listen, observe and interpret their views. Later I asked them to try and replicate the sounds they had heard in the background of the video. Children made sounds and music similar to the video by using loose parts as a primary resource.

Rationale

shafanaam — 2024-04-13 12:39:25 UTC

For my evening walk, I chose the beach because that is a suitable time to experience the surroundings in calmness and to hear all the sounds of nature. My loneliness was entertained by the sounds of slow-moving waves, the howling of the wind, the rustling of the trees and dusk announcing creatures of the night. This made me feel alive and light. So, I want to create a music-based activity for my children with my experience as the base. In our unit content, Dr. Ibrahim Baltagi mentions that music helps us connect to those around us, it also helps with expressing and sharing children’s feelings. I created an outdoor experience where children observe the sounds of the surroundings and recreate them using natural and loose parts materials as Aboriginals did. Music plays an important social and spiritual role in Aboriginal cultures, they make music using clubs, sticks, hollow logs, drums and seed rattles found in nature.

Reflection

shafanaam — 2024-04-13 12:40:34 UTC

Children showed tremendous involvement in the experiences and started to pick and share the sounds they heard with their peers. In doing so they create a strong social bond with one another, which is one of the expected outcomes. In the room, they made sounds of the rustling sound of trees using a bunch of leaves, using the pine cones they made a cricket sound, by waving a small tree branch with leaves they made a wind sound and by crushing the cellophane wrap they made their sounds of our walk on the dried leaves. It was a little overwhelming for a few children when doing it as a big group. In the future, I would make them as small groups, so that all their ideas can be shared and implemented. In the future, I would make them as a small group, so that all their ideas can be shared and implemented. Children were limited with the resources provided to make all the sounds they heard, so I will make sure to provide them with an adequate number of appropriate resources.

Movement: Experience 2- The Never-Ending Dancing Waves

shafanaam — 2024-04-13 12:41:25 UTC

Summary:

By having the beach as the centre of my assessment, I picked a topic that aligns with the same. With the help of my co-educators, we developed a dance routine that involves all children for a music video “The Goldfish” by Laurie Berkner band. The objective of the experience is to follow and capture the commands in the songs and move their body accordingly.

Rationale

shafanaam — 2024-04-13 12:42:26 UTC

In my observation, I felt like the objects that were floating on the tide were dancing to the music created by the rustling trees and wind. Being in the scenario, I realised my body started to oscillate and follow the movements of the floating objects. In general, children like to dance, in the goldfish song they copy and make the movements of the fish that live in the sea. When young children play through rhythm and movement, with someone they love, it will lay the groundwork for the accumulation of complex skills later in life. (Delafield-Butt and Tevarthen, 2015). Through dance and movement, children explore complex gestures and expressions, which will help them in their communication skills. In the Aboriginal culture people dance by imitating the movements of birds and animals around them. In their dance, they repeat the step of stomping the ground hard to move. In the same way, children copy the action of the goldfish in the song.

Reflection

shafanaam — 2024-04-13 12:43:08 UTC

For movement in children, we use methods like rhymes, yoga and physical exercise. After getting involved in this unit I got the idea of practising movements with an unusual topic, “The Goldfish”.

Children were very excited to learn this song and dance to all the instructions in the song. This song has a strong educational value and provides a variety of movements to practice throughout the song. Some younger children had difficulty following movements for a long-duration song, so choosing a song with less duration could be the key to having all children involved simultaneously and in the phase. Like teaching body parts, language, numbers, civilising and socialising, we also need to involve different topics that align with the idea of their recent outdoor experience.

Drama: Experience 3- A Day as a Fisherman

shafanaam — 2024-04-13 12:45:02 UTC

Summary

During my walk at the beach, I noticed children enjoyed playing as a fisherman who catches and releases the fish. They got this idea from the fishermen who were fishing in the sea. In our experience as an educator, we know that children love to do role-play. From the observation made I got the idea to recreate a setup where children can go fishing and have their catch. Role play plays an important role in children’s social and communication skills and spatial awareness.

Rationale

shafanaam — 2024-04-13 12:45:49 UTC

In our group time, we had a meaningful discussion about fishing as a profession. Like always children came up with a lot of queries and some shared their own experiences they had with their families. Fishing is one of the life skills and a best-practised hobby in Australia. For the indigenous people fishing is an integral component of connection to their traditional country. They used harpoons and spears as tools for fishing. From our unit content, The SAGE Handbook of Play and Learning in Early Childhood by Adena B. Meyers, Laura E. Berk, I came across the theory of Piaget (1966), who believed that symbolic play contributes little compared to role-play in terms of cognitive skills. In role-play, children exercise and solidify symbols acquired in other contexts. I strongly believe when preparing a child for school readiness we unintentionally restrict the freedom of creative learning, this can be changed by role-play.

Reflection

shafanaam — 2024-04-13 12:46:16 UTC

As the group time outcome, we involved the children to participate and planned the setup for the role play. They came up with many fresh ideas and chose the best idea for the setup. This action is one of the best examples to show that children are effective communicators (EYLF,2022). We build a boat and paddle using recycled cardboard. Then they used the toy sea creatures to create an impression of the sea. The children started to act like they were sailing the boat and used a shawl as a net for fishing. They were paired as a team and took turns until everyone got a chance. In a large group, the waiting time for taking turns is high, so they get distracted and start to lose interest. We can avoid this scenario by creating more than one property depending on the number of children and the subsequent role to be played by the children in waiting.

Over All Reflection

shafanaam — 2024-04-13 13:03:14 UTC

This unit has given me perspective to analyze an event with deeper meaning and make it as a useful educational tool. the information given by the theorists in our unit content has broaden my creativity in planning a experiences.

References

shafanaam — 2024-04-13 13:27:29 UTC