Introduction

If you look at any page on my blog, I would recommend this one by a mile despite its length!

My own personal project goal was to inspire and get children engaged with music. I was aware of their beautiful singing voices early on from the time spent in church on Sunday singing a range of Fijian ritual songs in harmony.

Early on in the project planning phase, it was decided to organise a mini-school concert showcasing the talent of the children with a range of 'music projects'. This meant that each year group had 3x30 minute lessons with me doing fun musical activities leading up to a performance in front of the volunteers, parents and students. The school were very open to the idea and thanks must be given to the leaders on my project in giving the green-light on my music project.

The 30 minute concert at the end of the project comprised of the following performances:

• Kindergarten- Peter and the Wolf Drama Performance
• Year 1/2- 5 Little Speckled Frogs
• Year 3/4- Twinkle Star Variations
• Year 5/6- I like to Samba! 
• Year 7/8- Hallelujah!
• Year 8- Steve Reich's Clapping Music

Kindergarten

The Kindi at the school I was volunteering at comprised of 10 children aged between 4-5. Most of their learning is through play and exploration and music at that age is critical to enable young minds to be creative. Luckily, I downloaded a whole selection of classical music for the plane journey and I found Peter and the Wolf. This was the perfect way to introduce classical music and how music can convey a story. They particularly enjoyed 'skipping through the forest' as Peter and acting like an angry grandfather with the menacing bassoon solo. I was impressed by their enthusiasm and enjoyment for the story and the Kindi teacher even reported back to me that they remembered the story and what it was about days after the concert. As I am particularly fond of teaching the younger generation, it was a pleasure to see the excitement of them moving and appreciating the music of Prokofiev. Something certainly different from their everyday class!

Year 3/4

Year 3 and 4 are 7-9 years and were very energetic. We began the week by listening to different types of music and they had to decide whether it was 'loud/quiet' 'fast/slow' 'happy/sad' and hence developing knowledge of the elements of music. This task lead on nicely to the project where they sang another simple nursey rhyme which they knew all the words too. We explored the structure of 'Theme and Variations' and created some unusual variations such as 'Underwater'! They enjoyed the quick variation, sang beautifully in the quiet variation and screamed to the top of their lungs in the loud variation! 

Year 5/6

Year 5 and 6 were the lucky group that worked with musical instruments. These instruments were percussion based, all made from materials found around the school including hollowed bamboo, coconuts and metal pans and using their pencils as 'hammers'. The percussion workshop was based upon 'Call and Response' playing including groups playing different lines of music. The use of sentences such as 'Samba, Samba I like to Samba' and 'Fish and Chips, I like the Chips' proved to be memorable and made the task of learning tricky rhythms far easier. The 'pan' group were responsible in setting the crotchet beat but in hindsight it was challenging listening and adapting the tempo so instead another word-rhythm would have made the task far easier and enjoyable with my sticks representing that beat. Nevertheless, in rehearsals they were amazed at how simple rhythms can combine together to form a pleasant sounding performance! 

Year 7/8

The top age category of the school was challenged in learning an English song. Hallelujah, despite being an easy song to sing in the UK, is tough enough with difficult words and the range that is covered can be difficult to reach too. It's also very challenging to unpick patterns that aren't present in the music so constant repetition is the key, having more lessons would have helped but within the timeframe, they performed it beautifully. I also set them the challenge of learning the words off by heart which for Fijian's to sing using their second language without many lessons was something I was immensely proud of them for doing. They rose to the challenge and many of them kept singing the song as I left for my last day, a truly heartwarming experience. 

Year 8

As I was on the plane to Fiji, mucking around with the on-board entertainment made me jump into music playlists and a certain piece struck my mind. Steve Reich's Clapping Music is a piece entirely based on clapping with 2 groups of musicians clapping the same rhythm 1-2-3/1-2/1/1-2 at different phase points, resulting in some very unusual rhythmic displacement. As I took Year 8 for most of the lessons I decided to teach them this additional piece for the concert. Boys and girls were split into two smaller groups and they picked up the rhythm very quickly! The difficulty was timing but the structure of the piece meant that even if we came in the wrong beat, as long as they kept going it would still form the unusual rhythmic displacement that the piece aims for. The piece turned out a success but sadly there was no video recording because of the precious space on everyone's camera! We chucked every musical element in: dynamics, tempo changing and structure which they followed fantastically and I'm sure that Reich would be surprised that his piece has now been remembered by a group of Year 8 Fijian pupils on the other side of the world!