Music with Mr Foster

We have been very lucky to welcome Mr Foster, our piano teacher, into our classroom on a weekly basis to support our Music provision across the EYFS and Key Stage 1. On his first visit Mr Foster brought with him lots of different instruments in their boxes and pouches for the children to guess what was inside! On opening these,  they found a variety of recorders and looked at how they were made. They were surprised by how small the sopranino recorder is compared to the large bass recorder, that needed a bent pipe just to be able to reach the mouthpiece! They listened carefully to the range of notes that could be produced across the five different recorders shown to them and discussed high notes and low notes.
 
Following this they looked at a music book and used the illustrations on each page to try to make sense of the musical notations on the page. Having discovered that Mr Foster had in fact brought with him a book of Nursery Rhymes, the children then had the opportunity to sing a range of them, before clapping in time and maintaining a steady beat. Things got trickier then when they explored speeding up and slowing down the pace as they maintained the beat! Finally they opened the case of the last instrument in the collection - a violin. They looked at the bow and discovered that it was made of horse hair, whilst the violin itself was made of wood. They labelled each part of the violin - the frog, screw, scroll, neck, pegs, shoulders, bridge, chin rest, finger board, sound holes and strings. 
 
By week two, the children were introduced to some new instruments - the oboe and the piano. They enjoyed seeing the reed and keys on the oboe as they learnt how the sound was produced and the keyboard, hammers, dampers and strings on the piano, discussing the different materials that each part was made of. We saw a real improvement in the participation of the children when singing some new nursery rhymes and marching in time to the beat. Well done!