First, it depends on the characteristics of music itself.
Have a strong ideological and artistic level. Music has no national boundaries. It has the artistic charm of infecting people through emotional expression. Children are young, imaginative and fond of fantasy, so vivid and changeable music melody and rhythm can stimulate children's imagination; At the same time, children's emotional exposure and emotional music can not only arouse their inner feelings, but also make them dance uncontrollably. Therefore, the music works selected for children must have ideological, artistic and distinctive style, so that the content, image and emotion expressed by music will be loved, understood and accepted by children and arouse their interest.
It is rich in diversity. The musical works suitable for children mainly include: excellent Chinese and foreign children's songs, instrumental music adapted from songs, simple instrumental music specially created for children, musical fairy tales specially created for children, and famous Chinese and foreign musical works or their fragments. It can be seen that the content, form and style of children's music appreciation works are varied. From the content, there are both works reflecting social life and nature, and works reflecting children's life and inner world. There are different forms such as songs and instrumental music. Stylistically, it includes marches, lullabies, waltzes and so on. It also includes outstanding Chinese and foreign works and outstanding folk music of different times. Music appreciation works with a wide range of themes, diverse forms and artistic beauty can broaden children's artistic horizons and enrich their knowledge and experience in music appreciation.
The structure should be neat. When choosing music appreciation activities for children, we should also consider whether the proportion structure of the works is reasonable. Generally speaking, music works with simple form, neat structure and moderate length are more suitable for children to enjoy. In the process of selecting works, we often find some excellent Chinese and foreign masterpieces, or musical fairy tales specially created for children, which are sometimes difficult to meet these requirements in structure or length. This requires teachers to carefully analyze and refine the works and the actual situation of children, and select more common paragraphs or music with obvious rhythm changes to refine them, so as to reach or approach children's cognitive level and acceptance. For example, the original structure of the big class music appreciation activity "Dance of the Golden Snake" is "introduction -A-B-A-B-A". After teachers' thinking and abstraction, the work is compressed into a simple trilogy structure of "Introduction-A-B-A", which not only respects the work itself, but also meets the requirements of education.
Second, it conforms to the age characteristics of children.
A selection of children's music works in small classes. Children in small classes aged 3-4 years old are influenced by the level of physical and mental development, and their ability to understand music is very limited. At this time, they often show a strong interest in "listening", and will willingly and spontaneously listen to various voices in the surrounding environment and take the initiative to distinguish them. "Listening" is a very important basic skill that children must have, the basic starting point of children's music education and the premise and foundation of music appreciation. Therefore, teachers can choose more listening materials for children in small classes and lay a good and solid foundation for music appreciation activities in middle and large classes in the future. For example, the small class music appreciation activity "Children Walk" lets children know a series of perceptual activities such as sleeping, getting up, walking, listening to thunder, watching the weather, windy, raining heavily, running home and so on. Let children creatively express their thinking ability and performance imitation ability with different sound changes in music.
At the same time, teachers can also choose some musical elements with simple structure, vivid image and short length for them to enjoy. For example, the music "Bunny Jump" shows the picture of Bunny jumping with cheerful jumping sound and beautiful fast-paced melody; "Little Bear Blows the Horn" shows the cute image of a clumsy little bear through a low and slow music performance. The swallow moves slowly, gracefully and smoothly, making children feel that the swallow flies freely in the sky, and so on. Children in small classes can't express their feelings about the works in words, but they will enjoy music, imitate it with their bodies and express it creatively, so as to achieve the purpose of appreciation and pave the way for enjoying more abundant and diversified music works in the future.
A selection of middle-class children's music works. At the age of 4-5, children's ability to appreciate music has improved, and they can gradually distinguish the different changes of sound, which is manifested in the further enhancement of listening ability, feeling ability and listening ability. At this time, they can feel some songs, music or simple instrumental images with different themes, distinct nature and short structure. Therefore, teachers can choose some music works with distinctive styles, such as waltzes, marches and lullabies. At the same time, they can also choose some music works with repeated phrases and paragraphs, such as some music works with AB structure and some simple three-part works with ABA structure.
Compared with small class children, middle-class children's ability to understand music in the process of music appreciation is constantly developing, and their ability to express music creatively is also constantly strengthened. Children in this period can basically understand the emotions and emotions expressed by music, and thus produce certain imagination and association, which are then reflected by external actions. Therefore, teachers can choose some music works with rich emotions and plots for children to enjoy, so that they can learn to express their feelings and understanding of music by using different artistic expressions such as language and literature, art painting, rhythmic movement and dance.
A selection of children's music works in large classes. Children in large classes have made greater progress in their ability to feel and understand music. With the continuous enrichment and accumulation of their musical experience, they can feel and distinguish more complex musical works, distinguish subtle differences in structure, artistic conception and style, and analyze and classify similar musical works with distinctive musical images. Their ability to express their feelings about music in language has been enhanced, and they can boldly imagine in the process of music change. Therefore, when choosing music works for them, teachers can choose famous and excellent Chinese and foreign music, as well as instrumental music, children's musicals and pantomime specially created for children, such as Dance of the Four Little Swan, Dream, Peter and the Wolf, and Piccolo.
Third, close to children's lives, in line with children's interests.
The choice of music appreciation works is the premise for children to feel, express and create. Therefore, when choosing music works for children, children's hobbies should be considered, and they should be good at introducing familiar contents in children's life into music activities, so that children can connect with real life and imagine and express with actions. When children have personal experience, they can have the desire to express music.
For example, the music work "Hard-working Lazy Man" is about the work in the kitchen, and children are familiar with it. The combination of children's real life and the experience of "doll house" laid a very good foundation for appreciation activities. Teachers' proper inspiration and guidance in the activities can arouse the enthusiasm and enthusiasm of every child to participate in the appreciation activities, and naturally associate and feel: some music seems to be mom washing vegetables, some music seems to be mom cutting vegetables, some music seems to be mom cooking, and so on. Gradually, the children enjoyed the music with great interest, and at the same time, they combined their daily work with the corresponding musical images to achieve the purpose of truly enjoying the music.
We can easily find that many children in life are very interested in some pop music and can often hum a few words casually. Starting from children's life and interests, adult pop music can also be used as the theme of children's music appreciation, but teachers need to seriously think, scrutinize, refine and sublimate the works in combination with children's cognitive level, and screen and filter the works. For example, songs such as "Mice Love Rice" and "Two Butterflies", which were very popular some time ago, are especially popular with children. The adult lyrics in the song are understood by children, and the feelings describing love in the song are transformed into feelings of friendship, which makes the sublimated works more suitable for children to appreciate and more easily understood and accepted by children, and overcomes the misunderstanding that "pop music is not suitable for children to appreciate".
Four, close contact with the theme activities, to achieve a combination of point and surface.
At present, kindergarten theme education activities are being widely adopted and implemented by kindergartens at all levels. In the process of theme activities, children can study and explore a theme in depth under the guidance of teachers. When choosing music appreciation works, you can also choose typical works to enjoy according to children's existing knowledge and experience under the theme background. For example, in the colorful ethnic activities with the theme of "Wa nationality in China" in the big class, children have a strong interest in Mongolians with distinctive ethnic characteristics. Especially after visiting the "Inner Mongolia Style Garden", they became more interested in exploring Mongolian people. The beautiful prairie, the lively Nadam convention and the fierce horse racing are all the topics they have paid close attention to recently. Therefore, combined with the experience of theme activities and children's interest in horse racing, we chose Horse Racing, an erhu solo with typical Mongolian customs. By appreciating the works, children can initially understand the timbre and expressive force of erhu, feel the warm and jubilant horse racing scene of Mongolian people expressed by music, and cultivate their understanding and sensibility of music. In this way, a single children's music appreciation activity is closely integrated into the theme activity, realizing the combination of point and surface.
Every work of appreciation is a work of art woven with sound. Let's take our children to listen attentively, with emotional experience, and strive to achieve the artistic education goal of quality education, so that music can become the greatest happiness in children's lives.