1. How music and movement promote children’s development

a. Social development

Music links children to their cultural heritage, assisting them to acquire cultural beliefs and values. Listening to music also exposes children to other times and cultures and provides the opportunity to gain appreciation for them. In addition, as children create music together, they engage in a metaphorical experience, where different instruments combine to make a unique sound that no individual instrument could produce. Through this process, they learn that to make beautiful music, you must have unity and work together.

b. Physical development

As children create music, they improve fine motor skills, coordination, and rhythm. Music also entices one to move and dance. Participating in movement or dance activities while listening to music enhances children’s ability to sequence sound, recognize and respond to rhythm patterns, and discriminate melodies (Ferguson, 2005). As children dance to music, they increase coordination, flexibility, and motor skills. They develop body awareness and self-confidence. Like music, dance is an art form and a means of communication. Through dance, children communicate feelings, thoughts, and cultural values and beliefs.

When Curious Minds provided dance props in the music area, the children became more interested in using the center. They would often dance in front of the three full-length mirrors while rhythmically moving streamers or scarves. At other times, they would dance while playing a musical instrument. Young children naturally respond differently to sound and silence, fast and slow music, and different musical styles (Metz, 1989). However, adults can enhance children’s movement repertoire by describing what children are doing, making suggestions, and modeling movement. Adults are powerful models. In one study, children using a music center during free play copied two-thirds of the teacher’s modeled movements (Metz, 1989).\

c. Cognitive development

Many studies have found a correlation between music abilities and academic achievement (Shore & Strasser, 2006). Music can aid in all areas of the child’s development. A study of 106 preschool children found that those exposed to a systematic and integrated music program significantly increased their motor, cognitive, language, and social-emotional scores as assessed by the Preschool Evaluation Scale (McCarney, 1992).

Singing relevant songs can help children to learn science, math, and language concepts (Miche, 2002). History and geography can also be enhanced by examining the music of the time period or geographic area. Music can also assist with memorization. When items to be memorized are set to music, children remember them more readily (Sawyers & Hutson-Brandhagen, 2004).

Music is organized mathematically; music and math support one another (Sawyers & Hutson-Brandhagen, 2004, p. 46). As children hear and move to a beat or read music, they use one-to-one correspondence skills. As they recall a series of sounds or actions (head, shoulders, knees and toes) they gain seriation skills.

There is also a strong relationship between music and spatial-temporal intelligence (the ability to visualize and mentally manipulate spatial patterns). A review of nineteen studies found this relationship was even stronger if children also learned music notation (Hetland & Winner, 2001). Other studies support these findings. When researchers assigned preschool children to computer lessons, piano lessons, singing lessons, or no lessons, those who received piano lessons showed a 34% increase in spatial-temporal intelligence while there was no change in children in the other groups (Shaw, 2003). Researchers found similar results in elementary age children (Schellenberg, 2004).

Although there were reports that children who listen to classical music at an early age show greater learning potential (sometimes referred to as the Mozart Effect), this claim has been refuted (Shonkoff & Phillips, 2000). Currently, there is no evidence to support a link between listening to music as an infant and brain size or school success (Fox, 2000; Hetland & Winner, 2001). However, one thing that we might learn from the study of music’s effect on adults is that brain development appears to be related to active engagement with music (making music) rather than just passive listening to music (Fox, 2000).

http://www.education.com/reference/article/music-center-enhance-children-development/

5. Storytelling using props (puppets)

1) Reveal. Introduce your prop slowly but surely by uncovering or revealing it to your audience. A bulky object covered in a blanket will ignite interest among your audience. Make sure that your audience knows its name, its age, its source or provenance.

2) Highlight. Take the opportunity to highlight a key feature or features of your prop. Keep your highlights short and to the point.

3) Benefits. Summarise the benefits of the prop if it's a product or device. If you are using a prop to explain an idea or a concept use the prop to summarise the benefits of your idea.

 4) Practicality. If possible you should demonstrate the practicality of the prop. Or demonstrate the practicality of your concept using your prop as an analogy. This is an ideal chance to build movement into your presentation.

5) Distribute. When you distribute a prop among your audience you build on one of the critical engagement steps. Your audience participates in your presentation. When you have an item or items circulating the room do make sure that you retain one yourself and keep the talk going. Working with props is an ideal way for you to get some key points across to your audience. Use a prop to explain a product or service. Or use a prop to provide a useful analogy to an idea or concept. Whatever your chosen prop, make sure that you rehearse, test and practise all your interplays. If the item opens, test it. If it moves then test that. Become fully familiar with its working before you are ready to present.

Props will give your presentations that extra dimension. It's well worth the investment in practice.

http://www.timetomarket.co.uk/presentation-skills-demonstration.htm

6. Advantages and disadvantages of using puppets

Advantages

- Provide them opportunity for verbal expression

- Puppets help to develop dramatic expression

- Helps to develop appropriate voice modulation

- Provides opportunity for children for the development of fine motor skills

- Give them confidence

- Provides opportunity for team work

- Provides them emotional release

http://www.scribd.com/doc/21559836/Advantages-and-Disadvantages-of-Teacher-Made-Materials

Disadvantages

- Need a time to make it

- Hard to find the suitable materials

- distract the students or cause them to not pay attention to what the puppet is saying because they are too busy focusing on the puppet looks.

Example of group singing and movement activities

Students need to reenergize themselves so that they won’t feel boring and lack of interest in the classroom. So, as a teacher we should sometimes provide them activities that are suitable and can boost up their mood during the learning process.

-Activities that can be carried out in the class need to be appropriate and the teachers must consider about the safety, space and tools that need to be used in the classroom.

-The activities conducted must be something enjoyable as primary level students are still in the mood of playing instead of having a boring lecture as kids are more prone towards games and fun activities.

-Some activities like singing together with teachers and simple games can be conducted and included in the learning process.

- Movement is exploratory and can shift a classroom climate from controlled to more open-ended.  With the proper management however, movement can stimulate greater creativity, communication, and ease in learning.

- Benefits of Fun and Laughter:

•  Boosts immune system

•  Exercises muscles

•  Releases tension

•  Stimulates creativity

Group Games can be categorized into some of the :

•  Circle games

•  Rhythm games

•  Chasing games

•  Sensing games

•  Mental games

•  Strength games

•  Games to break awkward silences 

The Examples of Each Games:

a)  Circle Games

Circle Games In these games, everyone sits or stands in a circle.

Pantomime your favourite hobby In this game, you can use different themes, such as careers, characters in a story, or whatever relates to your curriculum. Students begin seated in a circle. Each student takes turns. The object is for the student to pantomime his or her hobby. One student begins. He or she pantomime’s his/her favourite hobby. Next, all the students stand and try to follow along.  After 30 seconds or one minute, everyone sits down. Students call out what the hobby was. Continue around the circle. This activity is great for community building, recreation, and lesson support.

b)  Rhythm Games

Call and Response, Pass it On One student starts a simple clapping rhythm. Students repeat the call and response pattern 3 to 5 times after which the next student in the circle or row becomes the leader. Repeat and pass on. You can make the game more complex by having each student add on to the established rhythms. It becomes a long clapping sentence. After 4 or 5 students, it may be hard to remember! If it breaks down, begin anew with the student where the sentence broke down.  This is a great transition activity.

c)  Chasing Games

Amoeba Tag Two students are the ‘it’ or also known as the ‘amoeba.’ They hold hands and together try to tag the other students. When a student is tagged that student must also link up and hold hands with the ‘it’ students. When a fourth student links up, the link may subdivide into two links. At anytime the link can re-join and become a big link or amoeba. When all the students are tagged the game is over.

d)  Sensing Games

Red light/Green light This is a classic children’s game. One student stands at the front of the room and is the leader. The other players stand in a line on the other side of the room facing the leader. The leader turns his/her back to the group and calls out ‘green light.’ When this is called all the students try to get as close to the leader as they can. When the leader is ready to call ‘red light,’ the leader spins around very quickly to face the group. All the players must freeze in place. Anyone caught moving is out of the game. Whoever gets to the leader first becomes the new leader.

e)  Mental Games

Telephone or Telegraph This is whisper down the lane. Students sit in a circle or sit in a line. One student decides the sentence and then passes it down the line or circle. The whispering themes can be centered on subjects the students are studying. For example, students can pass down history facts, foreign language sentences or words, or mathematical equations, or any theme the teacher and/or class decides to use. This activity serves as community building, recreation, and lesson support (for example, support alphabet learning or animal identification, etc.).

f)  Strength Games

Three way thumb wrestle Students group up in threes. Three way thumb wrestle is performed.  Class can create a championship with the students that win the thumb wrestle. Game focuses on the coordination of using both hands and playing two games at once. This activity serves as community building, recreation, and breaks to lessons.

g)  Games to break awkward silences 

Call and Response Clapping Everyone begins clapping keeping a beat. One by one students call out their name three times. Here is an example, ‘My name is Joe, Joe, Joe.’ The class responds, ‘His name is Joe, Joe, Joe.’ This is community building.

-The purpose of these games is to add fun, laughter, and movement into the child’s day. This change of pace can also be recuperative to the students and to the classroom teacher as well. Ultimately, we want students to experience more movement in their lives and be inspired to keep moving. Gaming is one way to introduce movement. Begin to add creative movement activities as a way to introduce dance and expression into the classroom.

4. Steps to do music and movement activities in classroom

• Children have a need to demonstrate what they are feeling and thinking
• Teacher's role in fostering self-expression and kindling creative passion should be that of facilitator and supporter. 
• Make the time and space for children to share their music, movement, and dramatic creations with others-always by invitation, never by force.
• Teachers share their passions with spontaneity into music, movement, or acting to provide creative inspiration for the children.
• In planning musical experiences, consider to balance between children's spontaneity and the open-ended activities suggested by the teacher.
• Observe children's movements as they might create a movement to go with a sound, to decorate a song, or to express how they feel as they move from place to place. Remember to use the word movement and not dance.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QxM9iarlTQ

As a successful and dedicated teacher, we should know the effective way to capture the students’ attention in class in order to boost up their mood and interest in classroom. So, we need to make sure that the students are having interest in which kind of storytelling presentation so that boredom in class will not be expressed.

These Steps are Recommended to be Practised:

Preparing the Story

1.  Read the main story out loud. Read the translations and also read the passages before and after the story for context. Look up an unfamiliar words, places, or people. A good background for the story will make it easier to tell and remember.

2.  Visualize the story. Rather than memorize, visualize. The better you are able to picture the story in your mind, the better you can relate that picture to the others. Create story boards in your mind of the sequence of the events. Divide the stories into episodes and learn them episode by episode. Episodes change when the action, scene or speaker changes. Use key, repeated words as your guide in “re-experiencing” the story. If you have to look back at the printed copy, you have not spent enough time preparing to tell the story. The story must become your story. Keep it vivid. Use words that paint mental pictures.

3.  Adapt the story. The story length should be about one minute for every year of a child’s age. This holds true for youth, but you can stretch it a little more with an interesting story. For adults, the art of story telling applies to your illustrations and testimonies of real life applications. Also consider the background, vocabulary level, and characteristics and interests of your intended listener.

4.  Practice. Practice stories in the dead spaces of time–while trying to fall asleep, driving the car, waiting for an appointment, taking a bath or shower. Practice telling the story in front of a mirror. Record the story so you can listen to it. By listening, you are able to learn and refine the story, making it your own. The more you practice, the easier the story will flow.

Telling the Story

1.  Use a natural and relaxed manner and an expressive tone of voice. Hold the attention of the listeners with your voice. Speed up, slow down. Lower your voice or raise it. Express delight and surprise. Create suspense.

2.  Make eye contact with each person or scan the audience. With children, remember to sit on their level.

3.  Open the Bible to the correct reference and hold the Bible in your lap.

4.  Grab the listener’s attention with the first sentence. Get the action going.

5.  Alter the timing or pace of the story. Think about how boring music or life would be if everything existed at the same speed.

6.  Portray characters and events with your voice and your gestures, keeping in mind that gestures should be genuine, but not exaggerated.

7.  Beware of tangents. Tangents tend to confuse. Avoid too many details. Excessive detail also tends to confuse.

8.  Don’t forget to link the story to your lesson. In a simple sentence or two, tell them why you are going to tell them this story or why you told them the story. Keep it brief. Let the story simmer in your listeners’ minds. Let the story speak for itself. Don’t make it a sermon. Stories enhance sermons; sermons do not enhance stories.

Toolsfor Storytelling

1.  Voice. Your voice is your most important tool in telling Bible stories. The tone and mood of your voice should interpret the Bible story. The feelings of fear, sadness, anger, frustration, or even sleepiness should be evident in your voice to the same degree that they are evident in the story. The speed and direction of your voice will communicate. Example: “Jeremiah was put into a hole in the ground. He went down, down, deep, deep down in the hole.” Your voice can drop with the words “down” and “deep.” Also, using action words and sound words (“Slap,” “Crash,” “Smack”) can add interest, movement, and meaning to the Bible story. The pitch and inflection of the voice should be used from time to time to indicate different characters in a story. Be careful. Too much character can distract from the story. Don’t panic in the pauses. Pauses actualy can be used to great dramatic effect. In pauses, listeners feel the presence, not the absence of God.

2.  Facial Expression. Your face is the movie screen of the story. It can be blank with sound only or filled with the action of the story. A smile or a frown can help project the image of the place and people. As you portray different people in the story, think about what their faces would look like.

3.  Gestures and Movements. It’s been said that if you tie the hands of a storyteller, he or she will forget the story. Use your hands and body to tell and live the story. The best rule for using gestures is to use only meaningful gestures and to use them on a limited basis. Storytellers who use gestures and movements for every event or person in the story risk losing the preschoolers or making gestures and movement less significant by overuse.

http://www.creativeyouthideas.com/resources/improving-your-teaching/steps-to-storytelling/

4) Step to be a Good Storyteller