First Steps in Music Certification – Wenham, MA – Gordon College

All people are born with the potential to become musical. With inappropriate or limited musical experiences in the early years, children consistently lose their intuitions for thinking tunes, feeling rhythms, and responding to expressiveness in music. This course will provide a bridge from research to practice by demonstrating how a “natural” curriculum rich in repertoire of traditional children’s songs, rhymes, games and dances can develop young children’s musical aptitude. The First Steps in Music curriculum is designed to prepare children to become musical in three ways: 1. Tuneful – to have tunes in their heads and learn how to coordinate their voices to those tunes. 2. Beatful – to feel the pulse of music and how that pulse is grouped in either 2s or 3s. 3. Artful – to be moved by music in the many ways music can elicit a feelingful response. A model of parents and children playing together in the years from birth to age 3 will be presented as well as a curriculum for 3 – 8 year old children in classroom settings. Participants can receive certification in First Steps in Music by the Feierabend Association for Music Education