Growing Through Music in the Rural North

At the completion of our time delivering such a fun impacting project we pause to reflect on what the project has meant to all involved. Volunteers who tirelessly run toddler groups in their villages got some much needed support and resources. Families were given the opportunity to share in some exciting new activities such as messy play and music and movement sessions. Children had the opportunity to engage in hands on activities that help them to further develop their language and communications skills. Staff were given opportunities to learn new skills and develop their own delivery methods. Overall we all had a lot of fun singing,signing and dancing our way to new skills and confidence.

In the rural villages of North Yorkshire and Durham music and laughter has been heard coming from village Halls, children centres and other community buildings as families participate in the Pre-School Learning Alliance Growing Through Music project. This is a youth music funded project that supports volunteers and families in rural baby and toddler groups to add musical activities to their groups.

Staff had as much fun introducing activities as the families have had in participating. One mum said “ the sessions were great because they allow the adults to have fun “

Activities include puppet making ,instrument making and making props to use at music and movement time. Families found this part of the sessions especially fun and they enjoyed getting messy with the children.

While apprehensive at first about the music and movement part of the session, the children’s enthusiasm soon spilled over to the adults. The introduction of baby signing was especially well received.  Here are some of the comments made by parents:

“We spent more time together during the sessions”

“my child got more involved and thoroughly enjoyed it”

“I felt song time brought the children and adults together and the children thoroughly enjoyed it”

“increased my son’s confidence”

“my sons speech has come on leaps and bounds”

With the roaring success of the project we are looking at building upon the project to deliver in a wider geographical area and in Early Years settings as well as baby and toddler settings. We have taken the feedback from volunteers and parents to make the sessions longer and over more weeks as the most common comment when ask about improving the sessions was it was not long enough.