Early Years Music Project Berkshire Maestros

Berkshire Maestros are running a two year Early Years Music project to enable local children’s centres in the most deprived areas of Reading to offer meaningful music sessions for children under 5 with their parents or carers.

The main aims are:

To improve Early Years practitioners’ skills in delivering music making activities, enabling them to engage effectively with those families who are often harder to reach and may have limited prior experience of high quality music making.

To increase opportunities for Early Years children to access age-appropriate music making activities which allow them to develop their musical skills.

To strengthen the bond between Early Years children and their parents/carers, supporting increased confidence and improved sense of wellbeing for the children and parents/carers.

Intended Project Structure

The original project, started in January 2020, was designed to offer live music sessions for 0-3 year olds with their parents/carers, in four children’s centres that had been identified as being in the lowest 30% most deprived areas of Berkshire.

Sessions focused on songs and activities that strengthen interaction between the children and their parents/carers (lots of eye contact, actions, touch, swinging, bouncing, tickling etc.).

Each children’s centre would have 20 weeks of sessions led by an Early Years Music specialist. Ten hours of follow up support from the Early Years music specialist would also be available to each centre. Essentially two centres would have support for the first year and two more centres during the second year.

This would include training for a nominated member of the children’s centre staff, who would commit to participating in all sessions, with a view to running sessions on their own after the project ended (or integrating music making into their setting as they see fit). They would be provided with a resource pack full of ideas for songs and music activities.

An exciting box of music resources worth £500 was provided for each setting to keep; including a range of musical instruments suitable for under 3’s, instruments for under 1’s, as well as song board books and props like scarves, soft toys and stretchy lycra.

Each session was 2 hours to include a 40 minute baby class, a 40 minute 1-3 years class, 15 minutes discussion time with nominated member of staff and 15 minutes set-up time.

There were twelve spaces in each class in order to keep the classes more personal and engaging. Families were charged £5 for each block of five weeks to contribute to both the running costs of the children’s centre and to also encourage regular attendance.

What really happened…

The intended format was working very well for the initial 8 weeks up until the covid-19 pandemic happened and sadly we had to stop all of the classes. During that initial time the nominated members of children’s centre staff gained lots of ideas for incorporating into their own sessions and they were enthusiastic about continuing as soon as we could. The children’s centres remained closed for an extended period of time (March 2020-July 2021) so initially it was not even possible to arrange any online offers. In the meantime, we recorded lots of songs to our Youtube channel and invited the centres to share it with parents.

Eventually, we were able to start offering the classes online, from November 2020 and they were surprisingly successful. It was possible to offer all of the sessions that we intended to and the children’s centre staff joined in too. The main change we made to the format was that we agreed not to charge any fees for the classes, which meant that attendance was not always consistent, and we also made the sessions 30mins. The baby music sessions were particularly popular and we found we were able to give parents/carers lots of ideas for interacting musically with their babies at home. I was able to answer questions and continue training the children’s centre staff after each class.

How do we know it is working?

Teacher observations, parent questionnaires and children’s centre staff observations have all helped to build a picture of the success. Parents were asked to compare their child’s participation in singing, playing instruments, and moving to music before and after the set of music sessions. All the data analysis from the survey monkey questionnaire indicates a significant increase in each of these skills. Specific percentages will be given at the end of the project.

The questionnaire also asked parents to what extent they think singing can strengthen the bond between them and their child (before and after the classes) – all responses showed an increase.

We also have child observations from staff stating when they have noticed increased levels of participation from parents who were initially reluctant, as well as noticing interactions and eye contact between parent/child.

All staff have reported an increase in their confidence delivering musical activities, and this will be pursued in the next stage.

What happens next?

We are at the stage now where all the music specialist sessions have been delivered and all the training completed with the children’s centre staff. This next phase is about supporting the staff to run their own music sessions in their settings. This will look different for each of them as they slowly open up again to the public, but I hope to be able to report that there is more music making happening in all of the settings by the time the project officially ends in April 2022.

This aspect can only be fully realised by the end of the project because staff have been unable to run their own sessions yet. However, in discussions with staff they have all already reported an increase in their confidence to incorporate singing activities into their existing baby/toddler groups. The initial surveys of practitioners had revealed a lack of confidence when it comes to delivering music sessions – so surveys at the end of the project should confirm that their skills have improved. Likewise with the provision of music making opportunities – I anticipate the final surveys will show an increase once the centres are able to fully reopen.