The So-me books are fun stories about a likeable character, So-me. Originally designed to help children sing in tune and move in time, they provide a basis for developing educational and music concepts and skills. By listening to and joining in with the stories, and then by writing stories of their own, children are encouraged to respond sensitively and imaginatively to sounds in the world around them.

A former head of music at Auckland College of Education, Stuart Manins is active in retirement as lecturer, writer, teacher, and consultant. He is a member of the Early Childhood Commission of the International Society for Music Education.

Story No.1, So-me Goes Missing, introduces So-me as a character whose name often has a particular sound interval, and it directs children's attention to everyday sounds around them.

Story No.2, So-me and the Spider encourages children to listen to sounds which sometimes go unnoticed - sounds from outside a building we hear when we are inside, sounds inside a small space which is special to us because of its seclusion, and sounds inside our body.

Story No.3, So-me meets the Boss, develops the association of the soh-me interval with two stave lines, and the practice of chanting one's own name.

Story No.4, So-me. Oh and Romeo, introduces the me-soh interval which children find less easy to hear and imitate than soh-me. Their aural perception grows considerably when they can tell the difference between both these forms of the minor third.

Story No.5, So-me at the Pole, introduces lah in the name of La-me, So-me's brother. A s-m-l-m song is sung and whistled.

Story No.6, So-me in Space, exploits the s-l-s-m (Solar So-me!) pattern with s and m written in spaces as well as on lines.

Story No.7, So-me and the Dance, introduces La-so-me, So-me's sister (who dances like Salome!). There are different ethnic dances and hand signs appear for s, m, and l.

Story No.8, So-me and his Secret, revises the various combinations of s, m, and l used so far. A well known children's chant is shown to contain them and a new song includes all their previous melodic combinations.

Story No.9, So-me Goes to the Party, approaches rhythmic patterns through word phrases. It includes a singing game and common classroom tone colours e.g. drum, triangle, rhythm sticks, tambourine, shakers, cymbals.

Story No.10, So-me and the Monster, introduces rhythm syllables ta and ta te (or ti ti) in notation and the dynamic levels, p (soft) and f (loud).

Story No.11, So-me Finds 'Dough' adds the sound doh to the soh-me interval. Thus the tonic chord (s m d) is established melodically. Two tied notes introduce Ta_a and there is a new song using rhythmic symbols with the sounds s m d.

Story No.12, So-me and the Princess identifies visually the descending minor third between doh and the lower lah heard in the previous story. The tonic chord (d m s) is reinforced by singing it upwards. Ray is slipped in almost incidentally right at the end of the story between me and doh where it is so often found in melodies. Compound time rhythmic patterns are introduced.

The main aim of Music Stories for Juniors is to help young children sing in tune and move in time. Ideally, with encouragement from parents and teachers, all children should be helped to do this by the age of seven at least.

Some children will manage this four or five years earlier and should be encouraged to develop their talents without pressure in an imaginative way. Others will be later developers and should be similarly encouraged without being made to feel inadequate. From the child's point of view, this story should be something to listen to and join in with over and over again.

Parents and teachers will realise that the series of stories can provide the basis for developing educational concepts and skills generally and, in particular, those musical ones important for later musical growth. Teachers may like to use the stories as shared book material.

By naming the central character So-me, and singing his name so often, the reader presents the sound of the child's natural chant (descending minor third, eg, GE) to a point where the child will want to copy the sound. Similarly, the child will tend to imitate the rhythms and tone colours of the environmental sounds. Some readers may wish to keep chime bars of the chant notes next to them for ready reference while they read, or use another instrument, like the recorder, to establish the minor third. Those familiar with the educational and musical theories of Carl Orff and Zoltan Kodaly will recognise the learning advantages of these responses. This series of stories owes much to the sequences of melodic and rhythmic progressions they used. These concepts will be developed best if the child hears the stories read by someone who readily sings in tune and keeps in time. For those unsure of their ability to do this, a cassette tape is available, but experience shows that practically all adults who are enthusiastic about reading these stories to children will be able to provide a good model given suitable encouragement and 'ears to hear'

The second set of Music stories for juniors (numbers 5 - 10) builds on the musical skills established in the earlier books. These new stories are written for children who are securely singing in tune and moving in time and who need to extend their reading and writing opportunities.

Stories 5 - 8 add lah to the soh - me (s-m) sounds of the natural chant.

Stories 9 and 10, concentrate on basic rhythmic relationships and simple notation. They can be used at any stage in the series, but are deliberately placed here so that the natural word rhythms, free of notation, can be used in simple composition for as long as possible.

Many children, familiar with books 1 - 4 already will have started writing their own stories and will have included in them environmental sounds and s - m chant/songs. Books 5 - 10 are designed to encourage this creative, related arts response and to set the stage for developing musical literacy i.e. the ability to read, write down, and compose music.

The last two books of the series (Books 11 & 12) introduce doh and ray. This completes the pentatonic scale (d r m s l). Further notation in simple and compound time extends children's beginning compositions and their music reading.

This series of stories has now reached the important goal of preparing children in early childhood, that is up to eight years old, to 'see with their ears' and 'hear with their eyes'. They can perform, read, and create music stories through their own music, language, and movement, with imagination, sensitivity, and joy. They are ready to continue the challenges of more advanced methods and approaches - particularly those used by Zoltan Kodaly and Carl Orff.

The best time for children to start reading and writing music is when they start reading and writing language. There is no best time to promote a creative response; it is so important that it should be fostered at all stages of music development.

In New Zealand, the 1989 National Curriculum Statement for music identifies the following for juniors:
exploring environmental and musical sounds and discovering relationships;
learning to sing in tune and move in time, and to do these for enjoyment;
using voice, body percussion and instruments to express musical beat, accent and pattern including those from Maori and Pacific Islands music.

My job as a Teachers' College music lecturer has challenged me to help teachers develop the skills needed to do these things with young children. Here is an account of some of the things we have done and why we have done them.

I sat at the back of the classroom and watched the teacher-trainee reading a shared book to about twenty-five six year olds. The children sat wide-eyed and focused full attention on the book, the story, and the teacher. She read superbly. The story was accompanied by a wide range of vocal effects which told me that she not only knew how to entertain juniors, but also that she had a keen ear for pitch. Her voice went high and low; she buzzed, whistled and grunted, and the children were fascinated.

There is nothing new in that scene for any College lecturer who visits students during teaching practice, but the odd thing to me was that this student had just apologised for not teaching music. Her reason was 'the class doesn't like it and I can't do it'. Such talent, which begged to be harnessed for musical ends! The children strained to join in when they could. Any repetition was eagerly pounced on by the whole class who displayed a subtle sense of mimicry. Some words and sounds were mouthed in anticipation, and hesitancies in the story-flow were filled in with individual attempts to provide the next word.

It was at this moment that a special concern for helping young children 'sing in tune and move in time' was conceived. Why weren't there stories available which invited musical responses? Not just stories about music and musicians but stories with an intrinsic appeal which compelled children to become musically involved.

I needed no convincing that early childhood was an important time for musical growth. Developmental psychologists have identified these years as the time when children learn more, and more quickly than at any other period in their lives. The question was, 'Could I write stories, interesting to young children, and at the same time, ones which helped them to do musical things important for later musical development?'

Even at Teachers' College difficulty in singing in tune proved a real stum-bling block for a significant minority of students, and even occasionally blighted the musical progress of some who had hoped to major in music. A scan of the research literature confirms the importance of these skills. Some interesting claims are made. All recorded primitive cultures include special attention to singing and dancing. Pre-schoolers already have well-formed concepts of timbre and loudness and most children by the age of three or four make a broad distinction between fast and slow. On the other hand, metre and harmonic perception appear to develop much later on. Marilyn Zimmerman (1971) summarizes this situation:

Loudness discrimination develops first with pitch and rhythm developing concurrently. Because perception of loudness develops without formal training, instruction can focus on methods improving pitch and rhythm discrimination … harmony seems the last to develop … age eight marking the beginning of a critical period for the development of harmonic perception.

Like Suzuki, I wanted to tap into the child's powerful ability to learn things through intrinsic interest, to exploit the same forces that ensure that each child learns to walk and talk without formal training. I did not want my stories to be 'music lessons' and I was fearful of teachers who might spoil the flow of the story by stopping at each 'teaching opportunity'. I wanted an experience which teachers and children enjoyed for its own sake; then for the teacher to do no more, other than to see what happened. If the children want the story read again, then read it. If they want to read the story on their own, then let them. If they see a connection between a song they know and some aspect of the story, then follow up their interest.

If they go about their other tasks 'pomming' So-me poms, 'dripping' like a tap and 'tick-tocking' like a clock, take this as a gift from the gods and use their interest as a springboard for classroom drama, creative writing, movement and original song composition. With luck they (and we) might even discover new sounds in the classroom previously unnoticed.

My first story was 'So-me and the Spider'. It came to me in the bath one winter's morning when I was reluctant to leave the peace and comfort of a warm house and get on with the day's work. The longer I stayed still and quiet the more I heard and saw - from the traffic outside to the sound of my breathing in and out, from particles of dust in a beam of light to a spider climbing down a thread and a single file of ants marching across one wall.

By writing a fun story and naming the central character So-me, whose name was sung as often as it was spoken, I wanted children to imitate the interval which is so commonly used in their playtime chant as well as a host of interesting environmental sounds with memorable tone colours or regular pulses.

I had my text illustrated and took my story into the classroom. The children listened attentively and joined in whenever they could. One teacher suggested that I precede this story with one in which attention is drawn to more ordinary sounds around us. 'So-me Goes Missing' was the result. 'So-me Meets the Boss' followed.

I learned to change my stories to suit critical comments. It is now Dad who is seen washing the dishes and who panics at the sound of the police car, and it is Mum who suggests ringing the police when So-me cannot be found. Even the headteacher, Mr. Ross, needed a sex change in 'So-me Meets the Boss'. I learned a lot about children, other adults and myself in the process. The other stories followed.

The more I used the stories, the more I became aware of the importance of the environment in early childhood education. Again I turned to the research literature. Until about the age of nine, musical aptitude seems to be developmental, and dependent on the presence of musical opportunities in the child's environment. It is claimed that the first attempts at singing/speaking and the pace of further development depend vitally on the extent to which people immediately concerned with children occupy themselves with them and speak to them. In general, musical homes produce musical children. It follows then that for those who wish to promote musical development, home and school need to work together to provide a suitably rich musical environment.

Two observations seem noteworthy. First, it is not just the availability of music and musical experiences which are important for the child, but the opportunity for the child to interact with them. Radio and television in the home are insignificant factors for the promotion of musical development, presumably because they involve little effective personal interaction between the child and the sound source. The most important factors for the promotion of musical development in the home environment are:
(a) to hear singing in the home
(b) to sing with other members of the family especially the mother, and the ability of the mother and father to sing and learn new songs.

Second, the influence of the environment is not as important at some times in childhood as it is at other times. In examining the influence of the environment on development Helmut Moog (1976) claimed:

Up until the age of about three we could not observe in response to music any significant differences determined by the environment … But, between the ages of three and four, differences in home environment began to show their effect in the field of music.

More recently, other researchers have agreed that after the age of three a child becomes more receptive to certain kinds of environmental enrichment. They indicate that its effect largely gives way to peer influence and pressure during middle childhood. One goes as far as claiming that parents and the home are not influential in determining the musical preferences of American eleven year olds.

What we need are stories suitable for parents to read with their children at home, and for teachers to reinforce their use in various pre-school, school, or music group situations. With parents and teachers working together their impact could be so much greater.

I am indebted to John Sloboda for clarifying my ideas about two major learning processes in childhood. He writes,

Very broadly we may say that in our Western culture, musical enculturation is the dominant process up to the age of about ten; thereafter musical training plays an increasing important part.

He refers to enculturation as 'the spontaneous acquisition of musical skill from birth up to the middle years of childhood.' He notes that the main elements of enculturation seem to be:

1. a shared set of primitive capacities which are present at birth or soon after;
2. a shared set of experiences which the culture provides as children grow up;
3. the impact of a rapidly changing general cognitive system as the many other skills supported by the culture are learned.

He sees these elements combining to yield a roughly similar sequence of achievements for the majority of children in a culture and a set of roughly similar ages at which the various achievements occur. Enculturation is also typified by a lack of self-conscious effort and a lack of explicit instruction. On the other hand, training builds on a foundation of enculturation to achieve expertise.

Appropriate stories therefore, need to be part of the child's richly imaginative sound environment. It does not matter if there is no immediate response to the musical opportunities provided, as long as the adult reader gives an accurate model of the musical intervals used and the story is enjoyed by all. One often learns in early childhood education to plant seeds for a distant harvest.

To conclude: Music in early childhood needs to be enjoyable. It needs also to be rich in imagination and diversity. Because so much is learned through copying, models needs to be accurate and musically sensitive. Because so much is also learned. through creative experimentation there needs to be the potential and invitation to go further when interest is stirred. For the teacher there is an invitation to produce more material to assist rhythmic and melodic growth in such a way that children are able to learn at their own pace, are motivated by their own interests, and can interrelate music with language and movement.

REFERENCES

Buckton, Roger and Manins, Stuart. (1987). Optimal Ages and Stages in Developing Musical Activities and Concepts, Affective Response to Music Instrumental and Vocal Training, Studies in Music Education Number Two, Christchurch. University of Canterbury.

Department of Education. (1988). National Curriculum Statement (Draft), Wellington: Government Printer.

Manins, Stuart. (1987). Music Stories for Juniors - So-me Goes Missing, So-me and the Spider, So-me meets the Boss, So-me ... Oh and Romeo, Auckland: Longman Paul.

Moog, Helmut. (1976). The Musical Experiences of the Preschool Child. trans. Claudia Clarke. London: Schott Music.

Sloboda, John, A. (1985). The Musical Mind. The Cognitive Psychology of Music, Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Taylor, Marlene, M. (1985). Music in the Daily Experience of Grade Six Children, Psychology of Music. Vol.13, No. 1.

Willberg, Helen. (1985). Young Children's Responses to Music. paper presented to Music '85 Conference of N.Z.S.M.E. Christchurch.

Zimmerman, Marilyn. (1971). Musical Characteristics of Children. Research to the Music Classroom No.1. M.E.N.C.

Stuart Manins from New Zealand is the former Head of Music at Auckland College of Education and enthusiastic promoter of music stories for children. He has extensive experience working with pre-school and primary age children and has a special interest in Maori music. This paper was presented at the Orff 100 International Conference of Music and Dance and was first printed in The Music Circle, the Newsletter of the Victorian branch of Parents for Music.

How often have you heard or thought these questions?

When should my children start music lessons? Which Instrument? - Concerned parent

How can I start my music teaching and be a success? - Anxious beginning teacher

What are the most important things to do in music education?

When is the best time to do them? - Conscientious (ie concerned and anxious!) music lecturer

It was an attempt to provide some answers to these questions that the series "Music Stories for Juniors" was devised. Consider these questions in reverse order.

It seems that there is little doubt that we learn more and more quickly in early childhood (0-8 years) than at any other time in our lives. Musically, individuals can respond to most of the elements of music at least from a very early age if not from within the womb itself, and up to about 9, musical aptitude is dependent upon musical opportunities. The recent New Zealand Syllabus for Schools, Music Education, Early childhood to Form Seven emphasises the following for this important period: singing, chanting and moving to music, learning actively through discovering sound and improvising, developing a secure feeling for the beat, singing more confidently in tune, and relating inner hearing to visual images.

Children in early childhood years prefer to learn informally, typically with a lack of self conscious effort and with a lack of explicit instruction. Apart from a shared set of primitive capabilities at birth and a rapidly developing intelligence, this process of enculturation is based on a shared set of experiences from our particular cultural environment. This is the way we learn to walk and talk. Training, however, builds at a later stage on a foundation of enculturation to achieve expertise.

Helping young children to explore sound, learn to sing in time and move in time through the process of enculturation and then relate these experiences to simple traditional music symbols became a goal of prime importance for me. At the same time I became aware in a new way of the similarities between learning language and learning music. Both music and language depend on the perception, reception and production of sound patterns. Most teachers understand and exploit the connections between speaking, reading, and writing in their language programmes, but many fail to extend the association to singing and reading and writing of music. The link is direct and commonly supportive. The child who sings in tune and in time has a better ear for reading and writing language, and children who have learned to love writing stories have an excellent vehicle to include early attempts at musical literacy.

It was this link with language that suggested embedding basic music ideas into the text of a shared book, shared reading, sometimes known as co-operative or assisted reading, is a process that provides a step by step reading to and reading by children. Typically a teacher reads a big book with large text and interesting illustrations to children who sit close by. If the teacher is skilled in story telling, the children request the story over and over again and delight in joining in with the sounds and patterns that they hear.

My students at Teachers College could easily extend their classroom story telling skills to include stories about a likeable character called So-me, whose name was often sung to the interval of the child's natural chant (descending minor third eg GE). There were plenty of environmental sounds to make and copy, and the text included many examples of regular sounds such as the dripping of a tap to illustrate the beat. Once children have been focused on an absorbing activity that helps them listen carefully to sound variations it is easy to move into other more traditional musical activities.

It remained for me to write a series of stories that developed these musical skills. Once the soh-me interval and a secure feeling for the steady beat had been established in So-me Goes Missing, it seemed sensible to present the natural chant different pitch levels. This happens in So-me and the Spider. In So-me Meets the Boss the children are introduced to a chant on the minor third as So-me experiences his first day at school. In So-me, Oh and Romeo! the chant is turned up-side down and Romeo the cat's miaow be-comes me-soh. One of the advantages of combining language and music responses is that the child can receive praise for an accurate speech response without realising that there is still quite a way to go with the music component. This is information best kept for the teacher who can then design further experiences for the child who does not suffer from a feeling of failure.

The stories were found useful for a much wider audience than expected. Private music teachers, school music specialists. preschool groups and parents showed interest. A parent-funded programme offered by the Music Education Department at the Auckland College of Music adopted the stories as a basis for their sequential musical development. The Children's Music Centre (CMC) as it is called, is for four to nine year olds. It helps children develop general music abilities and then provides parents with some idea of the areas of musical performance best suited to their children for further instrumental training.

CMC staff were convinced of the need to focus on the skills of singing in tune and moving in time as a prerequisite for early experiences in playing tuned instruments. Some had close association with Orff-Schulwerk practices and were committed to developing aural and singing skills using the child's natural chant. This gave me the chance to trial new material and receive feedback from children, parents and teachers. We produced a second set of stories. So-me has a brother La-me in So-me at the Pole, and in the most recently published story So-me in Space, s-l-s-m (Solar So-me!) pattern is written in spaces as well as on lines.

Most children familiar with books 1-4 had already started to write their own stories and included in them environmental sounds and s-m chant/songs. Thus the new stories moved away from a skill-oriented goal, to a process-oriented goal of encouraging a creative related arts response in the children as well as continuing on through the pentatonic scale. It was also setting the stage for the development of musical literacy, ie the ability to read, write down and compose music. (Other books, completing a pentatonic scale have followed.)

The best time to start reading and writing music is when children start reading and writing language. The best time to begin instrumental instruction is just as soon as musical readiness is achieved - specifically shown by singing in tune and performing with a stability of tempo and a sense of metre. There is no best time to promote a creative response; it is so important that it should be fostered at all stages of musical development.

We learned something about the conditions that fostered children's creative responses. The children started writing their own stories when the So-me stories were an expected part of their musical activities not just a 'one-off' phenomenon, when the musical progressions in the stories were perceived to be part of the total music programme, and when their parents had the books and tape at home and supported us the best they could. After a couple of years we found that the introduction of a new So-me story every three or so weeks allowed sufficient time for the teachers to work in new material and yet keep up interest in the sequence of stories.

The children's creative responses were linked to the vividness, consistency and unselfconscious manner of the models given. As long as teachers sang, moved, played and acted with the children, so did the children similarly respond as individuals. As long as the children were given the freedom to respond in different ways, they were surprisingly inventive. As long as we provided in class the skills and ideas that caught their interest, it was at home in a relaxed, supportive environment that they produced their most sustained creative efforts. Once the Music Centre parents realised how much their support was valued, most became regular attendees to the classes with their children.