Music
Music is an innate gift given at birth. Wilmington Montessori School provides a developmentally appropriate music curriculum that nurtures this gift to its fullest potential.
Lessons engage students in activities exploring steady rhythm, melody, harmony and the diverse expressive qualities of music through speaking, singing, moving, creating, notating and listening. Songs, rhymes and finger plays foster the development of steady beat and audiation. Pitch is cultivated through echo, call-and-response, partner songs, rounds and harmony in the upper grades. Rhythm is explored through movement and listening activities accompanied by props including scarves, beanbags, parachutes and percussion instruments.
The music room at WMS is a wonderful environment for music education. Xylophones, metallophones, glockenspiels, congas and bongos greet the students as they enter, and various interesting percussion instruments line the shelves and cabinets. These are the “tools” that we use to understand more expressive musical concepts like tempo, dynamics, articulation and form; preparing young minds to understand tonal and rhythmic context. As students progress, this context is applied to musical notation. Our curriculum incorporates elements from several pedagogical streams, primarily Gordon’s Music Learning Theory, resulting in lessons based solely on the best practices in the field of music education.
Music by Age Group
Music Program Staff
BrendaRose Simkin
B.A., Psychology, Earlham College