I try to cover a wide variety of ICT: tools, programs and devices in my EYFS activities to help children appreciate its many uses/applications and to get them enthusiastic about using it to support their learning across many different areas.
One lesson which I do each year involves giving them a 'taster' of what the software 2Music Toolkit offers. This is best described as being a suite of programs for composing music on the computer, with each one varying in the amount of functionality it provides and thus enabling more simple/complex melodies to be produced. For this reception lesson, however, I just focus on 2Beat and 2Explore - possibly the two easiest programs available in the collection.
Being reception-aged children, I don't tend to spend too long stressing on the value of creating pleasing melodies - I just try to encourage them to think about the sequence (order) they are playing their instruments in and try to prompt them into making melodies which contain repeated elements in a pattern.
It's always a lovely lesson to do in my opinion as it lets the children be musically creative whilst at the same time gives them a little independence in learning a new user interface (watching the child who discovers how to change the tempo of their composition in 2Beat show it to their friends is nice to watch, as are those children who choose to tap/clap along to their work to keep a rhythm). Just look at these photos on my school website and you can clearly see the children enjoying themselves composing and sharing their melodies with each other. Making music using ICT is great fun!
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