This month on YouTube, Lucy Sparkles sings the well known children’s action song, ‘Head,
Shoulders, Knees and Toes’.
This version offers an excellent opportunity for musical learning as Lucy introduces the ‘thinking
voice’ which helps children to develop inner hearing.
Inner Hearing
Have you ever had a song ‘stuck in your head’? This is inner hearing. Inner hearing is the ability
to hear music inside your head without any acoustic input. At Lucy Sparkles & Friends we call it
our ‘thinking voice’. If we develop children’s inner hearing from a young age, then it will be so
engrained in them that by adulthood musical skills like sight reading and sight singing will be easily
mastered. Students with a developed inner ear will be able to pitch any note or interval as they
will be able to hear inside their head how it should sound.
You can help your children to develop their inner hearing in a number of ways.
1. Teach music through singing. The use of the voice automatically accesses inner hearing
skills, so through the development of singing, inner hearing is also being developed.
2. Help children to develop their musical memory through using puppets or pictures to
introduce songs and by performing actions that indicate lyrics.
3. Hum or play on an instrument the melody of part of a familiar song and ask your children
to identify it. They must search their musical memories for the song that fits.
4. Experiment with ‘hiding’ songs. This is where children begin singing out loud and, on a
signal, they continue singing silently with their ‘thinking voices’ (and then may be signalled
to sing out loud again).
Our version of ‘Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes’ is a good example of a ‘hiding’ song. In the
video, Lucy asks your children to use their ‘thinking voices’ for certain words (E.g. ‘head’). They
must have a good sense of pulse and maintain the tempo to be able to keep in time whilst using
their ‘thinking voices’. Joining in with the well known actions will help your children to keep in time.
Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) Aims
‘Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes’ also develops several learning areas from the EYFS national
guidelines. They include:
Expressive Arts and Design (Exploring and using media and materials)
To move to a regular beat
Physical Development (Moving and handling)
To develop coordination and control through actions and to explore moving the body in a
variety of ways
Literacy (Reading) & Mathematics (Shape, space and measure)
To pre-empt the lyrics which follow a repetitive structure/pattern
Communication and Language (Understanding)
To understand the meaning of words through actions
We hope you enjoy this month’s video! If you have any suggestions for future videos, please
don’t hesitate to get in touch.
Lots of sparkles,
Lucy Sparkles & Friends