Song Game
SONG GAME, for education professionals, offers a practical strategy for presenting age-appropriate, song-based activities to children through a creative, non-traditional, interdisciplinary* approach.
In Song Game, age-appropriate rhythm instruments serve as the “game pieces.” The instruments also help define the patterns.
Song Game fosters interdisciplinary learning and development by engaging children in activities that include:
1) Social Interaction
2) Movement
3) Musical Patterns
4) Rhythms from Simple Language Patterns
5) An Awareness of Story Concepts, and
6) Age-Appropriate Creative Thinking.
The Elements of "Song Game"
Performing songs is historically a social experience and CREATING a song through a collaborative effort adds another social dynamic. This can be found in a 2-step process that children execute quite instinctively:
1) Selecting/Deciding (of one or more elements), and
2) Presentation (rendering what is selected).
In their visual expression children can execute both steps on their
own. Therefore, these same two steps,
1) Choosing/ Selecting/ Deciding, and
2) Presentation, now works best by having a Leader / Guide / Director. (This is true for adults or children!)
In Song Game, the intermediary is the teacher serving in the role of Game Leader (or Music Leader). Now the choices made by the children can be guided into an interconnected whole: the sequence of patterns that becomes the song played by the Song Game players, children and teacher, together as a cohesive group!