Articles about Dalcroze pedagogy organized by age.
Early Childhood:
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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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Leading and Following, Up and Down
Over the past few weeks the 4-5 year-old classes have been exploring several different aspects of musical experience that I have written about previously. Now that they are getting used to working together as part of a group, I like to give them opportunities to lead and follow. Recently gingerbread men and women have lead…
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Drawing Music
For the past few weeks, you may have noticed your children leaving the classes clutching drawings. In the spring of the year, I usually begin to focus the children’s attention on ways that musical events and phenomenon can be visually represented. However, the longer I teach, the more I find myself delaying the introduction of…
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Infrequently Asked Questions About Early Childhood Dalcroze Classes
Aside from one or two perennials, I don’t get asked too many questions during my Dalcroze classes for young children. With busy toddlers demanding attention, there just isn’t a lot of time for chatting. (There are one or two questions I am commonly asked. See if you can guess what they are – I’ll include…
Early elementary:
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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…
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‘.