Wow, a singing playhouse!

Kirsty Maddison from Thornton's Baines' Endowed VC Primary School takes us inside her fantastically musical playhouse

Last autumn, our school embarked on an exciting musical project which started small but has just kept on growing! Through our Early Years Foundation Stage Profile, the Reception staff identified the possibility for further development of the creative area. We also wanted to look at ways to ignite the children’s desire to sing, not just in the Reception class but throughout the school.

We decided that the Reception class needed a separate room completely dedicated to making music and we wanted to take it outdoors. Fortunately, the local children’s centre helped us with funding to have an outdoor playhouse built and the children were very excited about choosing the right one.

Once the music room arrived, we set about decorating and filling it with lots of different instruments and we invited two local musicians to perform at the opening ceremony. Over the next few months, we invited a whole variety of musicians to perform for us, including singers from the local high school and older children from our own school.

It was very exciting to see the children’s confidence grow. Even the quietest children could be found in there, sometimes with a microphone or an instrument, enthusiastically singing and making up their own songs, actions and dances! One day, we even found some of the children composing their own music, using notation that they had discovered in one of the books provided!

After seeing how much the children loved to record themselves singing, we decided it would be fantastic to make our own CD. We approached Blackpool Sixth Form College, and the music teacher, Ash Goodinson, together with his students, kindly agreed to record the CD for us in their recording studio. 

We had an amazing day at the college – we all felt like pop stars! The college students entertained us during breaks when we went outside to sing playground songs and listened to stories. We created lots of artwork and the graphic art students are using these to produce the cover for the CD. Strong links have been forged with the college and we’re looking forward to singing along with their big band and choir when they visit us at Christmas.

The next step

This project has been lots of fun and we’ve seen some fantastic results. The children enjoy singing and are confident in their own abilities. At half term we learned a selection of new songs, including many from the Song Bank, and performed for the parents.

Not only has singing raised creative scores but it has also enhanced every other area of the curriculum, and particularly the children’s personal, social and emotional development. The older pupils have been impressed by the achievements of the Reception children and are keen to take part in singing, too. We have lots of projects planned, including a joint summer concert with our neighbouring schools and a community links evening where our local minister and some of the children will teach parents to sing African songs.

We’re also looking forward to some Sing Up training on playground songs to encourage everyone to sing more often. Hopefully, some of our Reception children will be able to take part in the training and can then teach the songs to the rest of the school!

All of this has given us the confidence to work together towards a Sing Up Gold Award, and what better way to do this than to start with our youngest children, enabling them to lead the way as our Sing Up champions!

More online

You can hear the recording that Baines’ Endowed made with Blackpool Sixth Form College by visiting the Bonus Online area.