I started teaching early years music long before I was a mother and have loved every minute of this incredibly joyful and rewarding ‘job’. However, now that I have 16 mo Isabel, I’m experiencing the sheer excitement of witnessing the musical development of my own child!

We recently moved to Singapore and so Isabel is not currently attending weekly music classes. Her musical development is purely down to simple songs sung frequently at home with mummy and daddy. This is something any parent can do- not just music teachers! She sings ‘Twinkle, Twinkle’ and a couple of other songs in jibberish but perfectly in tune and she is constantly improvising her own little ‘compositions’.

Our current favourite is ‘Hello, Hello’ from this video. This song is brilliant because it gives children the experience of call and response. Experiencing call and response is important because it helps children to develop an awareness of musical form. They must listen carefully and know the form of the song to know when it is their turn to sing! It also prepares children for solo singing because they practice coming in at the right time and singing without the teacher’s help (or in this case mummy’s help!). Songs where the response is sung (rather than spoken like in this example) also develop pitch matching skills as the children must learn to follow on from the previous phrase and come in using the correct pitch. Give this song a try at home and please let me know how you get on!

Lots of sparkles,

Lucy Sparkles (mum of Issy)