GIFTS AT WORK
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MUSICAL Discoveries
ver the past school year, Rachel Youngling made the monthly trek to preschool classrooms across Cape Cod, bringing with her a basket full of musical props and a desire to make a change in the lives of children in need.
using musical props such as shaker eggs and scarves. Then comes the highlight of the class—each student chooses an instrument, ranging from castanets to triangles to drums to the Caribbean guiro.
For 40 minutes, she gave students the opportunity to escape the difficulties of life through song, dance, and music. It’s all part of her Musical Discoveries program, which connects children to the arts during the early stages of development.
After reaching a crescendo, the students helped clean up the instruments, returning to the circle and sitting quietly as Youngling sang a lullaby, ending with the “Goodbye Song.”
Funded by a grant from the Arts Foundation of Cape Cod (AFCC), it offered a host of benefits to the children, who ranged in age from 2.5 to 5 years old and whose families qualify for Head Start, a national program promoting school readiness for low-income households. “Some children are homeless,” Youngling says. “Other children just have a single mom trying as hard as she can to keep all the pieces together at home.” Through the AFCC grant, Youngling reached 179 children in nine classrooms across the Cape this past school year. The classes started with a vocal warm-up, singing the “Hello Song” before leading into small movement exercises
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Though short, Youngling’s time with students boosted their engagement, enhanced their creativity, and supported their literacy development. Youngling’s role in all of this is to help children access a music program that exposes them to a variety of tonalities, meters, and styles in “a developmentally appropriate way,” she explains. “The ultimate goal is to bring children to music competence, which we define as singing in tune and keeping a beat. A child in a musically rich learning environment typically reaches this milestone between 5 and 8 years of age.” Regardless of background, Youngling says, all children can achieve this if given the opportunity. That is what this program does for the most vulnerable students on the Cape—it gives them the opportunity to shine.
Pops by the Sea 2020 • At-Home Edition
