Twinkle, Twinkle and the 7 Areas of Learning

Twinkle, Twinkle is a song that is known by most people and I am sure it is one of the first songs that many parents sing to their newborn child.

So, with this in mind, how can we use a song like Twinkle Twinkle to help children develop in the 7 areas of learning?

• Communication and Language
• Physical Development
• Personal, Social and Emotional Development
• Literacy
• Mathematics
• Understanding of the World
• Expressive Arts and Design

We can use Twinkle, Twinkle as a starting point for a music activity.

For example, an activity might be:

Adults show children a star prop.  They then ask the children to guess what song they are thinking about when they see the star? (Drawing the children’s attention to the shape if they are not sure.) The children may talk about different versions of Twinkle Twinkle that they sing at home.  I mention a couple of different versions in this blog if it is of interest to you: https://musicalabc.simplero.com/blog/2907-7-ways-you-can-use-twinkle-twinkle

The adult may wish to use a number of star objects and give them to different children around the circle; they could count together as they give them to the children. 

Then they sing the song (whichever version they all decide on) and encourage the children to pass the star around the circle as it is sung.  When the star or stars have gone all around the circle they take the prop/s in.  They then could follow this by asking the children to hold up their arms in the air when they miss out the rhyme words (e.g. star, are) as they sing the song again; they may hear the children filling in the missing words.

What may the adult observe the children doing during this activity?

Communication and Language: singing words that they know; putting forward suggestions to what the song may be; non-verbal communication by putting arms in the air on missed out words

Physical Development: passing star around; putting arms in the air,

Personal, Social and Emotional Development: working together passing and sharing the star/s; building self-confidence to try something new as a group

Literacy: filling in rhyming words 

Mathematics: knowing the shape of a star; counting star shape/s

Understanding of the World: singing a song that is maybe a part of a routine at home, e.g. sung before bed

Expressive Arts and Design: Joining in with a familiar song

Follow up

The adults may then like to put the star props in the music/performing area to enable the children to continue on their own.  In this area or in other areas, where there is individual play taking place, they may see children: telling others what to do; playing with the words in the song; repeating a phrase from the song over and over; playing an instrument whilst singing along to the song….

Music is so powerful that we can use it to our advantage. 

If you would like to use music more in your early years setting, I have written an online training course that may be of interest to you.  It focuses on how we can use music activities to help children in other areas of learning.

 To find out more please CLICK HERE about Music and the 7 Areas of Learning

Happy music making!