The Program

The Children’s Music Foundation was created exclusively to promote the study of music as an educational tool in our elementary schools, to support school music programs and to promote music in education throughout the United States.

The complete 60-lesson First Note music curriculum is currently in development with the  help of several music and education professionals. The finished program will incorporate proven methods of music instruction developed by Carl Orff (Orff Schulwerk), Emile Jacques Dalcroze, Zoltan Kodaly and others. A 4-lesson beta program is currently being tested in several states, with the complete program pilot launch scheduled for the 2010-2011 school year.

The program is designed to be ‘facilitated’ rather than actually ‘taught’ which involves a teachers manual that is synchronized with the First Note DVD. The video has regular pauses allowing the teacher a great deal of flexibility and control of the content mix, length and pace of each lesson.

Each program lesson will follow a similar path or pedagogy beginning with the students singing the First Note ‘theme song’ along with the DVD. The music man (Arturo) appears, reviews the previous lesson, introduces a new concept and ‘word of the week’, then disappears and reappears with the ‘Music Friends’ that he practices the lesson with while the classroom students mirror them. Lastly, each lesson ends with a visit from a surprise guest from another country that introduces an instrument from that country.

The program is a standards-based music program for use in Kindergarten and 1st Grade (K-1) classrooms, and can be used by all K-1 teachers, and as an aid to music instructors.   Best of all, it’s just plain fun and the kids love it!