Composing with Scissors.

If I had to choose a favourite art form (a hard thing to do), I would go with music. I find it so enthralling and exciting. I've always wished I had more musical talent (I am friends with my ukulele). Inspired by Honigman and Bhavnagri’s (1998) article titled, Painting with Scissors: Art Education Beyond Production, I created a plan for an activity where those involved construct their art, which in this case is music, with anything they can find.

Source: Armatage Montessori

Anyone can participate in this activity, and I can see it working amazingly in an early childhood classroom. The task would be to find any kind of object, and then as a group, we would compose and record a song using the sounds we create with our found objects. Every one would explain what they would do with the object, and we would use technology, such as a computer program, seeing as most classrooms have a computer, to record the sounds we make, and then would take all of our samples and create a song.


The essential part of our song would be the beat. The beat of a song is like a pattern. Pattern "suggests flow, rhythm,, motion, or movement" (Schirrmacher and Fox, 2009, p142). As opposed to a visual pattern, music is an auditory pattern. it is what makes us tap our feet or nod our head in time with the music. As with visuals, a beat can be "plain or simple, regular or irregular, sequenced or alternating" (Schirrmacher and Fox, 2009, p 142). Learning about patterns in music can be a beneficial music lesson for children, allowing them to get in touch with the rhythm and help them understand what creates music.


Reference
Schirrmacher, R., & Fox, J.E. (2009). Art and creative development for young children (6th Ed.). Belmont,CA: Delmar.