Journal 8

This week in Music 373, we learned about creativity in child development.  First, there are quite a few benefits to teaching children in a creative way and is important as well.  There is a certain way we can help children learn through the creative learning practice we did in class this week.  Lastly, for the multicultural project, I have thought of 3 cultures to talk about, the Filipino, Vietnamese, or Japanese culture, and I have finally made my decision on what I will officially talk about.  We learned a lot about being creative in class this week that will help for our future in teaching.

Teaching kids in a creative way not only helps increase their imagination, it is a much easier way for kids to be able to understand material when they can relate to it.  The basic idea we learned from reading chapter 5 is how to use instruments in a way that could help the children learn.  They would learn about the difference in dynamics, pitch, and melody through the music they make from the instruments.  Having the children play sounds at a certain time in a certain way, they can use the sounds in their imagination and relate it to the story being told and that should teach them things such as loudness in sounds or softness in sounds in certain situations.  This is why teaching children in a creative way helps develop their learning skills a lot better.

The lesson we learned in class can be very helpful with having the kids develop in their creativity levels.  To start off with, we started by telling a story.  Then we had more people join in by making sound effects that related to the underlined words.  When someone said "at the bottom," that person would made really low sounding sound effects because the word "bottom" sounds like it would relate to a really low voice and not a high voice.  The same would go for "climbing up the hill"; the other person that makes sounds for this line would make an ascending sound effect because it says "climbing up," so it would be starting off low and becoming a very high sound effect.  When we do this, children can start to relate sounds and words together due to this creative way of learning.

At first I was able to think of three possible cultures to talk about because I can relate to all 3 in some sort of way.  I am taking Japanese at NIU right now and have been interested in it since 7th grade.  Vietnamese I'm interested in because I am part of the Vietnamese Student Association on campus so I know a little about the culture, but would like to know more.  Finally, I was considering learning about the Filipino  culture cause i know barely anything about it and my girlfriend plus a few other close friends are from there.  In the end, I decided to go with the Japanese culture; I really want to go to Japan someday, and if I ever decided to teach there, knowing more about their culture would be the most beneficial.