AS PART of ITEC’s celebration of 30 years of service to the community, they hosted an Early Childhood Development (ECD) practitioners’ enrichment workshop last week Wednesday.
In celebration of their own South African Mother Goose Day, ITEC renamed the intimate enrichment workshop a Rhythm and Rhyme Day dedicated to enriching ECD practitioners with knowledge and skills on how to teach toddlers music, movement and rhymes.
ECD practitioners from 15 ECD centres or creches in and around East London attended the workshop which was facilitated by ECD music and movement practitioner Marion Rogers.
Rogers offered an exciting presentation highlighting the benefits of teaching nursery rhymes, music, movement and rhythm to toddlers.
“Music and movement are so vital to a child’s development. It’s brilliant for children’s motor skills, language development and social development,” Rogers enthused .
She also demonstrated a class with Grade R pupils from St John’s Primary School.
The children were treated to a music class during which they sang nursery rhymes, learnt new ones, danced around and used different instruments.
The ECD practitioners attending were shown new and creative ways to teach their toddlers music and nursery rhymes.
Rogers also demonstrated how important playing is for children’s early development.
“Children learn through play, so it’s very important to give them time to explore and play around with instruments and toys.
“It’s also enriching to give them visual representations of what they’re learning,” Rogers said.
Rogers runs private music and movement classes for toddlers from her home and often makes instruments and toys out of things she has lying around.
She uses these to give children a holistic and multisensory learning experience.
Those who attended the workshop were shown how easy and effective making your own instruments out of bottles, lids and pipe cleaners can be – without incurring any major costs.
Rogers also demonstrated how she gives children toys or trinkets that represent the rhyme they are singing. Using Intsey Wintsey Spider as reference, Rogers made toy spiders out of pipe cleaners for the children to touch and play with as they sang the well-known nursery rhyme.
“If you add in a visual representation of the particular rhyme the children have learnt or are singing, it adds a whole new dimension to their experience. Besides being really fun for them, it helps them remember things and understand things better,” Rogers explained.
