Alma Flor Ada

Música amiga: Pedagogía creadora a través de la canción
Música amiga: Pedagogía creadora a través de la canción

Teacher’s Resource Book Description

This hand­book, inspired in the Trans­for­ma­tive Edu­ca­tion process devel­oped by Alma Flor Ada and F. Isabel Cam­poy, explores the use of songs in the class­room and pro­vides spe­cific sug­ges­tions to be applied with Música amiga.

It is divided in two major parts. The first, Apren­der can­tando, explores the uses of songs in top­ics like:

• Las can­ciones y la cultura
• Las can­ciones para elim­i­nar la ansiedad y facil­i­tar el aprendizaje
• Las can­ciones y la cultura
• Las can­ciones como base para la expre­sión cor­po­ral o dramática
• Las can­ciones en la adquisi­ción de las habil­i­dades lingüísticas
• Las can­ciones en la inte­gración entre la escuela y el hogar
• Las can­ciones y los val­ores transformadores

The sec­ond part offers spe­cific sug­ges­tions for each of the 120 songs con­tained in the Música amiga program.

Author’s Note

The pro­duc­tion of the Música amiga Pro­gram has been one the high­lights of my life as an author. Although these books may have a much hum­bler phys­i­cal appear­ance than many other of my books, this pro­gram com­bines the cre­ativ­ity of three extra­or­di­nary artists and human beings: Isabel Cam­poy, Suni Paz and Ulises Wensell. Fur­ther­more the prod­uct was orig­i­nally pub­lished by my son Alfonso Zubizarreta and its pro­duc­tion was one more expres­sion of his sup­port for my work.

Many of the poems/songs that appear in Música amiga were orig­i­nally part of the Read­ing Pro­gram Hag­amos caminos, and sig­nify the first time that Suni Paz and I col­lab­o­rated. I have men­tioned in many occa­sions that hav­ing such an excel­lent musi­cian cre­ate music for my poems has been one of my great­est satisfaction.

Isabel Cam­poy brought her sen­si­tiv­ity, humor, and cre­ativ­ity to Música amiga, cre­at­ing a num­ber of orig­i­nal poems for this pro­gram, which were also put to music by Suni. The value of fam­ily, the trea­sure of cul­ture, the impor­tance of main­tain­ing our lan­guage, the appre­ci­a­tion for learn­ing and rea­son­ing, and the joy of cel­e­brat­ing life in all its forms are some of the top­ics in Isabel’s con­tri­bu­tions to Música amiga.

The art in these books was orig­i­nally cre­ated by Ulises Wensell for Hag­amos caminos. Ulises is a most tal­ented artist and has been a true inspi­ra­tion for my writ­ing. I truly wanted to write children’s books because I dreamt that Ulises could cre­ate for my text art of the qual­ity of his illus­tra­tions for El emper­ador y los pájaros or El retorno de la pri­mav­era, which I con­tinue to con­sider absolute masterpieces.

As life would have it, I was able to demand, in order to accept the request to cre­ate Hag­amos caminos that Ulises would be the illustrator.

And he cre­ated, for that read­ing series, art appro­pri­ate for any qual­ity lit­er­a­ture book.

When devel­op­ing Música amiga we were delighted to be able to draw from the Hag­amos caminos art to illus­trate this col­lec­tion of poems/songs.

And an extra­or­di­nary com­bi­na­tion of tal­ents have given life and light to these books and CDs that can enrich all and every class­room with the gift of poetry, songs, and art.

The teacher’s resource book is one of sev­eral hand­books that Isabel Cam­poy and I have cre­ated to offer activ­i­ties that fos­ter the Trans­for­ma­tive Edu­ca­tion phi­los­o­phy we spouse.

The ini­tial part of the hand­book, Apren­der can­tando, was cre­ated as a pre­sen­ta­tion that Suni Paz and I enjoyed offer­ing in many national conferences.

That mate­r­ial has been recorded and is avail­able in a two cas­settes set with the same title.

READERS’ RESPONSES

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