Our Program
We use music as the tool in our weekly music classes, parent education series, and professional development workshops for classroom teachers to advance the cognitive, physical, social-emotional, and academic development of children at home, in schools, and in communities.
We are confident that our program is a powerful way to promote interpersonal connection and create a joyful, accepting, and nurturing learning environment.
In-School Music Residency
For a minimum of two years the Foundation sends our trained Music Together® teachers to lead each Pre-K or Kindergarten classroom in a weekly music and movement session.
Utilizing the Music Together recordings and songbooks in playful, developmentally appropriate activities, our teachers ensure each class supports the cognitive, social, physical, and emotional development of each child.
Research-Based Curriculum
The Prelude Music Foundation brings the Music Together® program to the students we serve. Music Together is a pioneer in music education in schools and childcare settings serving children from birth through and including kindergarten.
The research-based, comprehensive curriculum includes award-winning music and developmentally appropriate activities that can be easily integrated into any early learning setting, including pre-kindergarten programs, Head Start classrooms, childcare centers, and in-home care.
For more information about Music Together® In-School and other Music Together programs, click here.
The unique Music Together curriculum components raise the overall quality of children's early learning in the following ways:
Supports children's development in key early learning domains.
Gives teachers tools to enhance classroom life and reach curricular goals.
Supports family engagement and parent-child relationships.
The Music Together curriculum, which is aligned with Texas Pre-K and Kindergarten Guidelines, uses a variety of songs, sounds, rhythms, and activities to help support children’s cognitive, language, physical, social and emotional development.
The use of activities in classes help foster children’s:
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self-regulation
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social competence
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self-confidence
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ability to work with others in a group
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coordination and balance, body awareness, small-muscle strength, and hand-eye coordination.
The use of songs exposes children to:
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the basic structure and sequences of sounds involved in language, helping support emergent language and literacy development.
The use of rhythmic chants in varied meters:
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can familiarize children with concepts of proportions, patterning, and counting, supporting their emerging math skills.
Family Engagement
Before the end of year Family Engagement Concert at Miller Outdoor Theatre, musicians from Apollo Chamber Players, Mercury Chamber Orchestra, and the Community Embedded Musicians from the Houston Symphony visit classrooms, bringing their violin, cello, bass, and viola.
The professional musicians sing, dance, and play their instruments for the class, building bonds and inspiring the students.
Towards the end of the year, we bus the students and their parents and teachers to Miller Outdoor Theatre where they sing and dance with professional musicians from prestigious organizations from across Houston. The professional musicians play the songs the children have been learning all year, providing the students and the wider Houston community with an opportunity to make music together!
We know that children learn from the important role models in their lives—their parents, caregivers, and teachers. To increase family engagement and complete the home-school connection, we provide resources for families to use at home.
We've found that when parents and caregivers are given the tools to engage musically with their children, they'll use them—especially when they discover that they are helping their children become confident music-makers and supporting their overall growth.
Teacher Involvement
In alignment with Music Together’s guiding principal that, “Music Learning Supports All Learning®”, the foundation provides professional development to classroom teachers on how to use Music Together activities, songs and materials to support their educational goals and weave music into their classroom’s daily routine.
Active participation in music classes and online support tools from Music Together Worldwide help classroom teachers elevate their overall teaching skills. As they learn to use music in their work every day, they'll gain a new arena for observation, evaluation, and appreciation of children's development in many different areas.
Through our continuous improvement research partnership with All Kids Alliance at the University of Houston, our program staff learned that we needed to strengthen our bonds with the teachers in the classrooms we serve in order to more effectively serve participating students. As a result, we hosted our first-ever Summer Institute in August 2023. This two-day workshop gathers 40 classroom teachers to collaborate with our music specialists and explore how they might use our program's songs to help support literacy, numeracy, and classroom management beyond the weekly visits from our music specialists. In the months after our Summer Institute, we see massive improvements in teacher engagement, student engagement, and overall program effectiveness.
Community Partnerships
