A unique child: Inclusion - Community singing

Practitioners at East Staffordshire Children's Centre, frustrated by the lack of appropriate resources for their families, decided to produce their own. The ethnic minority population of Staffordshire is low, with the highest numbers concentrated in Burton upon Trent. Many of these are Urdu-speakers, and their families use the Children's Centre.

A lot of singing has been heard over recent months as snatches of English and Urdu emanating not only from the childcare settings, but also from local offices.

A display encouraging parents to contribute both English and Urdu traditional songs and rhymes met with an enthusiastic response. The centre's practitioners and speech therapist felt that rhymes played an important part in developing children's early communication and speech skills and would provide a fun activity at home.

The centre secured funding of £4,000 from the local Paget Community and Learning Partnership and other sources, and the project was on the way. Two local primary schools, Christchurch Infants and Grange Community School, volunteered to sing the tunes, and a recording studio was booked.

SINGING AND RECORDING

Singing the more familiar songs in English was no problem for the young children, but they struggled slightly with the less familiar Urdu songs. Year 8 Urdu-reading pupils from a De Ferrers Specialist Technical College joined in the project and the informal choir was ready.

Parents who were going to take part in the singing had to pull out at the last minute; this left the leading parts with two practitioners, Sandra Lewis and Zahida Parveen-Ali.

One of the schools did not have an Urdu-speaking teacher so, in addition to them singing the English songs, Zahida taught the children the Urdu ones, too. They were interested in learning the new words, identifying them in the booklet and relating them to the pictures.

Singing, and recording in the Brewhouse Arts Centre was a great thrill for them, and they were invited to sing again at the launch of the CD at the Children's Centre.

Accompanying the CD of 12 songs and rhymes is an illustrated booklet, with the English songs and rhymes starting from the front cover left to right, and the Urdu ones starting from the back cover right to left, meeting in the middle.

The Urdu script has an English phonetic translation to help the English readers. A nice touch to catch the interest on every page is a tiny inquisitive ladybird with a 'can you spot me?' message to alert the reader.

BENEFITS

The CD is proving a delightful inclusive resource for parents to use at home with their children. One parent says, 'I am pleased my children are listening to the Urdu rhymes on the CD as I haven't sung these to them before even though I speak Urdu in the home.'

Not only have the children at the Children's Centre benefited but the project has touched the school children, too. Parent Kausar Parveen says, 'We don't speak Urdu in the home but my daughter took part in recording the CD and since then she hasn't stopped singing them around the house, and she can now sing them without looking at the words.'

Parents are encouraged to take every opportunity to enjoy the songs 'anywhere and at any time'; when things are going well (in the bath) and when life is a little fraught (when a child needs comforting). Songs and rhymes also travel well. One parent says, 'My daughter liked it so much we had to have it on all the way to Devon in the car.'

The resource has also been useful for small groups working with parents off-site. Some practitioners have found this a useful tool for inter-cultural exchange.

A family learning creche leader says, 'Our group is really excited about using the CD; we run a creche for a family learning group. Most of the parents speak Urdu but we have never sung Urdu rhymes before.'

There is concern that traditional nursery rhymes are being forgotten, yet for generations children have responded to their rhythms, been soothed and comforted by them, have developed listening skills, and repeated the words.

Knowing that the written word has meaning is the first step to reading, and young children are absorbing this knowledge through the pleasure of sharing songs. Children for whom English is not their first language have often lost more than English-speakers, which has been recognised in this resource.

READER OFFER

The Favourite Songs and Rhymes package is for local distribution only, but we have ten copies to give away to Nursery World readers. To enter, send your name and address on the back of a postcard or envelope, marked 'Favourite Songs and Rhymes', to Nursery World, 174 Hammersmith Road, London W6 7JP, or e-mail your entry to letter.nw@haymarket.com. Winners will be the first ten names drawn on 24 June.