By Age

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

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  • 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

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  • 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

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  • 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

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Early elementary:

  • Ensemble Skills for 1st-2nd Grade (Part 4 of 4)

    This is the final part of a series on skills, goals and objectives for 1st-2nd grade Dalcroze classes. The lists from the previous posts on movement, rhythm and pitch would not have been out of place in many other introductory theory, ear training or music or movement fundamentals classes. I regard this final category, ensemble

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  • First Instrument

    I am always pleased when the old standards come out in my early childhood child/adult groups. I’m not talking Gershwin or Berlin here (though that would be great, too), I mean chestnuts like “The Eensy Weensy Spider” or “The Wheels on the Bus”—even if the adults seem somewhat embarrassed to be singing them. Yes, they

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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‘.