Research On Children’s Music Games

Abstract: Music games are one of the natural, effective and ideal educationalmethods and can naturally make children’s instinctive and potential musicalcapabilities develop and mature through an organic and harmonious combination ofvarious kinds of musical elements with children’s psychological development andphysical behavior. The dissertation, by using the cross-disciplinary anddisciplines-correlated approaches, makes a systematic study of the features of musicgames, behavioral patterns of music games and subsequently provides assistance increating music games and teaching by music games.In early days of music education, the relationship between games and musiceducation was comparatively valued and assured. With class teaching in school as ourmain educational place and educational form and music as a subject, the connectionbetween music and games weakened in the primary and secondary schools. In the late19th century, researches on game theories revealed the important role of games inchildren’s education and more attention was drawn to games. In the20th century,modern game theories were developed to research and explain the connectionbetween children’s development and games and to reflect on the influence ofchildren’s games on children’s development by incessantly observing the phenomenaof children’ games in early childhood education. Theoretically, the phenomena ofgames are explained and features of games summarized on the basis of theconfirmation of the important role of games in children’s development. In the sameperiods, Froebel and Montessori, as pioneers of early childhood education, introducedgames into kindergartens and made use of favorable elements of children’s gamesfrom different angles to improve the contents and teaching methods in thekindergartensIn music teaching, famous music teaching methods by Carl Orff, Dalcroze andKodaly also included games in music teaching in the kindergartens and muchexperience was gathered in music teaching by using games. In the21st century, withhigh human awareness of the link between children’s capabilities for music andchildren’s natural drive to play and deepening human cognition of children’s learning and development, teachers of early childhood music education are required tosystematically study the features of music games, the choreography of music gamesand the organization of music games in teaching at all levels and from all angles in thehopes of developing children’s music capabilities.The dissertation firstly sums up five consensual features of games and musicgames, secondly describes the influence of games and music games on children’sintellectual development, behavioral development and social growth by studying thecorrelation between games and children’s development and related theories andresearches, thirdly discusses the same quality and structure of games and music fromthe viewpoints of games and music, the interactive patterns of music and games andthe role of music in music games, analyzing the structure and function of musicgames, summarizing the frequently used five behavioral patterns of children’s playingmusic games and looking at the use and the potential role of musical instruments inmusic games, fourthly discusses the advantages of music games in teaching, the basicrequirements for teachers’ teaching and the necessary points of attention based on thebasic principles of games and the traits of children’s psychological and physicaldevelopment, and fifthly analyzes the methods for the choreography of music gamesand the points of attention in the choreography of music games and in particular,emphasizes the awareness of the choreography of openly-structured music gameshelpful to teachers in organizing impromptu music gamesIn short, children’s music games are an important form. They invariably generatenew forms along with the cultural development of children in different times and havedisparate functional implications. Researches on children’s music games will gofurther, and new forms will need discovering with new changes in teaching practice.