Soundscapes were the main focus of today’s lecture with julie. A soundscape is a way of using pictures to represent different sounds, for example, a star could represent the noise of a guitar chord being played. It does not nessisarily have to utilise musical instruments; it could be recordings of people talking or singing, body percussion or using everyday objects to create different noises.

A soundscape could be used to create a piece of music based on any topic. So today, we created our own soundscapes that could relate to our personal object. Here is the example we created as a class with julie:

After this, we created our own versions:

This incorporated visual arts and music in to one. I think children would enjoy creating their own version and they could do so with limited resources. This kind of task would help children to deleop their team work skills, their drawing skills, as well as considering beat and rythem which links in to music. Using symbols instead of words cis also a form of literacy. Being able to read and interpret the symbols is a skill in its self. I very much enjoyed taking part in this activity and I think children would engage well with this task.

“Extend creative insights by combining ideas or encouraging them to interpret information in new ways. Learning in this manner is multifaceted; it draws upon and develops the exciting interrelationships of the various forms of children’s innate intelligence by awakening linguistic, mathematical, spatial, kinaesthetic and musical modes. This permits individual children to conceptualise and understand by using their strength areas to compensate or overcome weakness in other areas. It also has the impact of motivating children, sustaining their interests and improving their self-esteem”. (Bloomfield, 2000, p.108).

This extract from Bloomfield sums up very well how this kind of task could help children as it opens up so many different aspects of the curriculum and could be delevoped in many different ways.

Bloomfield, A. (2000) Teaching Integrated Arts in the Primary School Oxton: David Fulton Publishers.