Youth Music has recently launched the handbook Tuning In To Children, which offers a framework for planning and implementing a programme of training and CPD (Continuing Professional Development) for early years practitioners and musicians working collaboratively to deepen their understanding of young children and their music making.

Written by early childhood music specialist Nancy Evans, Tuning in to Children explores the specific skills required by both practitioner and musician to support children's learning through music.

Aimed at early years settings, music organisations and musicians, the handbook places a special emphasis on recognising and responding to children as musical creators. Tuning in to Children supports the principles of the Early Years' Foundation Stage, which will become a statutory phase for children from birth to five from 2008. The handbook advocates that any programme of musical activity must be built on an understanding of the children's competence, curiosity and existing musicality.

“Tuning in to Children will support musicians and early practitioners to work together more effectively, utilising the skills and knowledge of both, for the best interests of the child that is sensitive to the local context and that can be sustained by practitioners after the project has ended,” explains Evans. “I hope that music making with very young children will be planned with a mind to their existing creativity and competency and respectful of the multiple ways in which they learn.”

Tuning Into Children has been developed from Youth Music’s flagship early years project, The Cluster Programme, which was piloted with the Association of British Orchestras and the London Symphony Orchestra in 2006. The Cluster Programme supports orchestras and other music organisations to work with clusters of Children’s Centres local to them.

For more information, including how to order a copy of Tuning in to Children,
please visit www.bongoclub.org.uk/tuningintochildren