MUSIC, STORYTELLING, DANCE, CO-CREATION, DRAWING, DIGITAL MEDIA

Region: North
Municipality: Frederikshavn
By: Skagen
Year: 2020
Artist: Viggo Steincke
DAILY OFFER: Children's Garden Fyrrekrat

At our school, musician Viggo Steincke contributes to the LegeKunst programme.

Through music we will work with singing and music, rhymes and rhymes, tones, rhythms, pitch and tempo.

One wish is to reconcile this. Together with the children, make songs, rhymes and dances that catch with funny words and can be shared with the other children in the nursery, thus strengthening the language development of all and having fun at the same time.

We meet for the first time. Everyone sits down and looks expectantly at Viggo. He starts telling the children something in Donald Duck language. They have to guess what he says. "We can't hear what you're saying," the children say. Martinus says out loud: "Then we'll just have to open our ears." "You're so silly, Viggo," says Benjamin.

Viggo starts by introducing different instruments to the children, but they have to close their eyes and tell him what animal it sounds like. First he plays a calimba. The children close their eyes and listen. One says: "It sounds like a little bird". Another guesses "A song from Palm Beach" and a third: "A black beetle". Viggo tells about the calimba and the singing bowl. The questions fly around his ears and soon they know how the instruments are made. Then we sing the starting song and the elephant song. It is not long before the children know them by heart. To this day, they still sing them.

Viggo has started an adventure about a dog, a cat and a duck. Now the children are supposed to retell the fairy tale over and over again. When Viggo has read the little introduction, he asks the children what they think is happening now.

"A peregrine falcon is coming"
"Maybe the duck and the dog had been caught by some robbers and the cat got upset"

The children came up with many suggestions and everyone is excited to see what's in the fairy tale next. When we meet Viggo again, the story has become longer and the children are so proud that Viggo reads what they have contributed. Viggo reads about the peregrine falcon and Martinus says with a smile, "I was the one who said the peregrine falcon should be there - Lene, did you see how happy I was when the peregrine falcon was there?"

Viggo is good at playing the guitar and plays for all the songs we sing and also for stop dancing, which is always one of the most fun. The children take turns playing the Xylophone and Viggo tells the children that now they have to make a tune of their own to which they can make a song. The children find this exciting and after a while, both rap verses and a melody are made for a song about the duck, the cat and the dog.

Each time, the fairy tale is poem and the children actively participate and the songs are practiced. They find it fun to make their own story. After each Viggo, the children draw a picture each about the fairy tale. These are hung on the wall where the fairy tale is continuously told in pictures.

The children look forward to every visit from Viggo. They hurry to sit down. Sasha is quick and says: "I'll sit next to Viggo" and Benjamin says laughing: "You're crazy Viggo". The children are figuring out what this is all about. They are very active and participative. The fairy tale is a hit and the stop dance every time, we can't get around either. They love to make the melodies of the songs and what they are about. Meanwhile, the kids have started singing "We will rock you" on the playground. Berit (educator) grabs the ball and picks it up the next time Viggo comes. We work on the rhythm with rhythm sticks and she talks to the children that we could make a song for the fairy tale. "It should be about the peregrine falcon" say the children and it is not long before the children are singing the song both outside and inside. Today, several months later, they are singing it in the Big Group and clapping the rhythm on the table.

The fairy tale is finished. The children have drawn the story and everyone should take a copy home. Last time we film the whole adventure. Unfortunately Viggo isn't here because of Corona, so we have to manage on our own. Lene reads and Berit helps the children to sing and rap to the story and keep the rhythm. Suddenly Martinus gets up and wants to be the conductor, so Berit and Martinus help each other. The children were really good and we watched the film together when we had finished. Even today Martinus is the conductor every time we sing the song. Afterwards, the children have come up with many lyrics for what we sing in LegeKunst and we catch what the children come up with.

The last LegeKunst is quite sad. Then we'll have to see how we can continue working in everyday life. We have planned to continue working on children's participation, so it will be interesting to see where we end up. Before we go to the playground, Martinus says: "Let's go and play Viggo".

Viggo says that he has experienced that LegeKunst in Fyrrekrat has been qualitatively different. The fact that the children themselves write poems to the songs we sing, that they themselves have written poems to the fairy tale, is fantastic. They came with so many inputs that we had to pick some out.

Viggo also thought it was great that Berit caught the children singing "We will we will rock you" in the playground. It became a song about the peregrine falcon in the fairy tale and of course was included in the story. Viggo has never experienced the teachers taking over before.

Berit and Lene have been very happy with the process. Once we figured out how to go about it at our place, it just worked. We've had a really good working relationship with Viggo and it's been great to see that once the children were sure what this was all about, they gave a lot more of themselves and loved Play Art and especially Viggo. It has been a good learning process for us, also because we have had to learn to let go more. The children clearly showed that they really liked the recognition. So even if we thought it shouldn't be the same every time, they wanted the same: ex. stop dancing, which was a hit every time. The adventure has been fantastic and the children are so proud that it is their work. Often we have found the children singing and playing on when they come out.

One day, Benjamin called when we had arrived at the playground: 'Lene, come and see what I have built'. He was sitting in the pit and had built the finest cave with a moat around it and a bridge of sticks over the moat and into the cave. It was the cave from the fairy tale.

We have experienced that the children have grown during the process. Some children have opened up more and contributed more than they otherwise would have done and others, who have difficulties socially, have contributed and received recognition, also from the other children.

Many greetings
Martinus, Benjamin, Elias, Lilje, Sasja, Maise, Sofia, Esther, Ida-Marie, Christian, Elias M, Berit and Lene

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