Music Specialist

Music, Movement, Songs and Rhymes are really important and valued at Pembury House. Every week, Sinan, our music-specialist teacher, gives all children opportunities to explore their musical self. We sing songs, say rhymes, and explore instruments, such as the ukulele, xylophone, violin and hand percussion.

Phonics through Music:

Sinan supports the children to use sound and body movements imaginatively to represent characters and narratives through music and songs. Children explore their own body movements in relation to the sounds they hear and use their voices as instruments. This extends children’s progress in all the seven areas of their learning and supports Early Phonics, using the Letters and Sounds document. Each week we have a 'Song of the Week' and 'Rhyme of the Week.' Ask your children to tell you about them!

Musical Staircase Project with Sinan:

  • Pembury is excited to be providing ‘Musical Staircase’, a music project to develop children’s cultural capital and diminish attainment difference.
  • This is an inclusive project, teaching children in small groups or individually
  • The children learn to sing and sign the notes of a musical scale using the Kodaly Method (Do,Re,Mi). This develops their sense of pitch and dynamics.  Using 8 physical divisions (from lying to standing tall) a musical staircase effect is created.
  • The children also learn to read musical notation. They stand on a giant musical stave, then move between the lines and spaces to create music. This is played simultaneously on the violin which culminates in the children playing songs they know on the stave, using themselves as the notes.
  • This explorative way of learning through music sparks children’s interest and progress in communication and language skills, early phonics and early number skills.
  • The Kodaly Method of learning music is also about the essential wellbeing of the child.  Learning requires several fundamentals to be in place. Young children have the opportunity in the music sessions to practice skills in being able to listen, communicate, concentrate, feel good, take part in groups, make relationships, and think creatively… These fundamentals form the basis of more formal learning later on.
  • Research has found that schools using this approach in Hungary (where Kodály was from) excel in all other subjects and have improved children’s wellbeing (Abi Rooley-Towle, 2.6.19)