North Carolina Early Learning and Development Progressions: Birth to Five

Domain: NC Foundations for Early Learning: Cognitive Development (CD)

Subdomain: Creative Expression

Goal: Children demonstrate appreciation for different forms of artistic expressions.

Skill Progression: Music

Age: 48-54 Months

You may choose a different domain, go back, or click on a skill below for more information.

Begins to be aware of musical syntax (rules for how the various aspects of music come together) and to understand and use musical phrases (segments of music)

Situations for Observation of Skill

Observe the children in small groups when they are making up their own songs. The songs can be related to a theme, dramatic play, or any topic.

Elicitation Strategy

Give the children musical instruments and observe how they put together their songs.

Behavior Observed

Children use patterns in their songs that appear to follow rules (repeating a line, ending the song at the end of a sentence, etc.). They also develop patterns of rhythms within their music and tunes that sound melodic. They may also imitate patterns they remember from other songs.

Routines-based Intervention (Embedded Instruction)

Give children time to play with music, to create their own tunes, songs, rhythms and dances. Listen to many different kinds of music as a backdrop for work and play, and as a focused listening activity and topic of discussion.

 North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, 2015

©2015 by the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/.