Hello friends! Today I’m sharing a music map for the folk song “Let Us Chase the Squirrel”–quick check, have you downloaded the free song card from my last post? Great! Let’s go!
Music mapping can be an incredible tool to read, write, and analyze music. You might be thinking–wait a sec, my kid is four–surely Lauren’s not saying four year olds can analyze music–guess again! Through the aide of a music map, young children can visually recognize and kinesthetically feel when parts of the music are the same or different, and they can even start talking about those “parts” (we call them phrases!) through simple discussions. And do you know what that means? Four year olds can do form and analysis on the songs that they know and love!
Music mapping can either be pre-prepared or child-created. The map I’m sharing today is pre-prepared, but some day soon I want to talk more about the process for child-created maps. They are another incredible tool for children to record the songs they know. They remind me of a child’s early drawings, which to the casual observer may seem like scribbles or absent-minded marks, but in reality are meaningful creations that a child can label and describe. A child-created music map is to written music what handwriting development is to writing.
You can see a demonstration of today’s prepared map on my instagram. As you direct this activity, consider the questions at the top of the page. Talk about the way the map looks, and the way the experience felt. Maybe your students will realize that there’s parts of the map that look the exact same. Hmm, do those parts sound the same when we sing them? How interesting… (You could even mention the fact that in other written music that you might read in an orchestra or for piano lessons, things that sound the exact same look the exact same!)
You can trace the line with your finger or with a small stick like a chopstick. I think chopsticks can be kind of fun, and might feel like a conductor’s baton (I use chopsticks for all kinds of things in my classroom! A cheap and easy manipulative.)
Have you heard of music maps before? I hope you give this one a try and report back on how it goes! I’ll share more in the future! Happy singing!
