Madeleine Carabo-Cone's Method of Music Teaching: A Sensory-Motor Approach for Young Learners
In 1969, Madeleine Carabo-Cone, a music teacher from New York, developed a method of teaching music to young children through movement, guided games, and play. The method was piloted at a Harlem Day Care Center with the aim of intellectually stimulating preschoolers through sensory-motor experiences and emphasizing general perception development and concept formation. Carabo-Cone believed that highly structured subject matter could be introduced to a child if it could be translated into an environment that the child could explore, discover, and assimilate, much like the child's original environment as an infant.
According to Carabo-Cone, learning should be integrated from the beginning, especially for skills that involve intricate physical coordination. She found that playing games on a musical playing field, in addition to providing variety in recreation, contributed significantly to laying a sound foundation for the study of music. Psychologists agree that acting is a child's substitute for abstract thinking, and motor behavior is the most conspicuous characteristic of childhood. Associated sounds, physical movement, tactile experience, space relationships, and personal comparison all provide "learning-in-depth." Even at an elementary level, these games develop instantaneous coordinations, keener perceptions, and visual focus, demanding constant memory discipline, all of which are literally "brought into play."
Carabo-Cone's structured environment includes a piano and large drawings of the grand staff on the floor, a large table top, and plastic wall charts. Children act out musical concepts by seeing, touching, hearing, and responding physically through movement. Thus, the grand staff and its musical notation appear to the child as a game-court or "gymnasium" for stimulating the mind and body. Through personal experience, children deal with the concept of directionality, as well as the mathematical concepts of sequence and equality. Initially, children are not introduced to note names, but rather, the learning area is limited to ten black lines and their adjacent white spaces and to the simplicity of sticks and circles that are the components of musical note values. It is the quick recognition of these stick and circle elements in alphabetical letters and musical symbols that is the basis for reading.
The Carabo-Cone method facilitates music reading, lengthens attention span, strengthens visual perception, and intensifies concentration. Children not only attain concepts of self-awareness, directionality, space, and time, but they also begin to acquire a basic sense of ownership as they "become" the various musical components, such as note values, musical instruments, or parts of a song. By wearing musical costumes and identification cards, students function as central figures in the musical score. As such, they are immersed in the musical environment and absorb it naturally through the senses and kinesthetic experiences. In this method, all abstract ideas are translated into concrete objects with which the child is in constant physical contact. The entire program consists of concrete operations—learning by doing, learning by being, and learning by making. The essence of acquiring knowledge involves the child's physical, psychological, and intellectual powers and mirrors the original approach to learning through the early developmental stages.
The Carabo-Cone method aims to contribute musical literacy to all children instead of a random few.
Getting to know music from around the world can be one of the most exciting and appealing ways to be introduced to new and different cultures and experiences. Music is a universal language, meaning that it transcends borders and opens up an entirely new way of thinking.
You do not need to have any musical experience or be able to read music to use this book. It is aimed at your or your kid's first musical experience with a toy musical instrument. Nowadays, toy xylophones are well-tuned and can be used to easily become introduced to the world of music.
This ebook includes 53 popular, rhythmic, and easy-to-play folk songs and melodies from all over the world. Through music, we are brought together and we can gain a better understanding of people from all corners of the Earth.
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