Articles about Dalcroze pedagogy organized by age.
Early Childhood:
-
Phrasing
A phrase can perhaps be best described as a musical sentence. Phrases can be long, extending over many bars of music, or short, lasting only a few beats. And just like a spoken sentence, phrases are often separated by a breath, or at least a feeling of a breath. The ends of musical phrases can
-
Leading and Following
Because music is often a social activity, the Dalcroze classroom is a great opportunity for kids to experiment with roles that will also be important for them as they move through life. Over the past several months, I have become interested in giving them experiences of leading, following, working with a partner and being a
-
A Basic Structure for 4-5 year-old Dalcroze Classes
Hello Lucy Moses Summer Intensive 2013 participants, and anyone else interested teaching music to young children! As requested, here is an outline of the structure I use for my classes for young children. Though I do follow this basic plan for most of my classes, this represents only what works for me – there are
-
Is my child gifted?
There is one comment that I often hear from parents that still catches me off guard: “He really responds to music!” The sentiment is usually expressed with a mix of surprise and awe, but seeing children respond to music with delight, enthusiasm, passion, abandon, inventiveness and curiosity would likely surprise few teachers of young
Early elementary:
-
7-9 year-old Dalcroze: 3/21/17
What can you do with 4 spots? The question is quite open, but the kids took it in the spirit intended (uses were restricted to ways to arrange and move through them). Here are some of the ways they discovered, and questions they explored: arrange in square, step only on the spots what’s the difference
-
7-9 year-old Dalcroze: 3/28/17
Here’s what we did: Tempo and dynamics Follow ( 2 dotted quarters, 3 eighths, 1 dotted quarter) In this classic Dalcroze exercise, the class moves a pattern through a variety of tempo and dynamics changes. The three eighths required us to develop some technique, as the students found it difficult to run for three and
-
7-9 Year-old Dalcroze, 4/4/17
This week’s activities: We first reviewed the notation and language for some basic rhythms for compound (ternary) meter: dotted quarters, 3 eighth notes, quarter-eighth. I put the symbols on the board, and asked one student to stand in front of the one he/she wanted to hear and see moved. After this quick reaction game, I
-
7-9 Year-old Dalcroze: April
Life caught up with me in April, so this is the first update for class activities in over a month. Here is a brief list of some of the things we have explored and games we have played over the past several weeks: Toss the bean bag on the high note. Kids hear melodic patterns in
Late elementary:
Adult
note: during the pandemic, when we were looking for ways to keep ourselves moving, I made some posts for adults to practice their eurhythmics skills. For more about teaching Dalcroze to adults, view ‘by subject‘.