Topic: Movement - By Children
Adults’ abilities to do gesture songs triggered by text depends on they’re having learned to do them when they were children. Children’s abilities depend on their age. Arnold Gesell’s team noted, "most of the organization" of the neuromuscular system "takes place in the first ten years of life, and proceeds with an orderly sequence." [1]
The critical age for imitative motion songs seems to be eight years when children become able to distinguish "between original and acquired" movement. [2] They also develop an ability to recognize right and left on another. [3] The first allows them to isolate gestures for practice. The second makes imitation easier.
Within a year, by age nine, their "eyes and hands are now well differentiated. The fingers also show new differentiation." [4] Gesell noted parents reported a child of this age was "either good or poor with his hands." [5]
Neuromuscular changes created an upper limit for a growth phase in which movement could be enjoyed for itself. Gesture songs in summer resident camps did not function as a safety zone for children to overcome frustrations arising from uncoordinated muscles. Instead, they presented an arena where they might show competence. They felt sure they could perfect movement routines, if not today, then before the end of camp.
Textual gesture songs stayed in the camp repertoire for older campers when the movements were tricky, like those for "Junior Birdsman," [6] or could be speeded up like kinetic tongue twisters. One woman remembered when she was a teenager "bursting at ‘Ensy Wensy Spider’ in the dining room. I can remember sitting there, getting hysterical, not at my own [ . . . ], but seeing the girl across from me, breaking up so we couldn’t finish." [7]
Gesture songs that appeal to young children are much simpler. A parent posted a video of a four-year-old girl doing "Kumbaya" on YouTube. She consistently rolled her hands outward on "kumba."
Her gesture for "ya" was raising her arms from the elbow with her palms facing out and fingers spaced. On "Lord" she raised them over her head from the shoulder and spread them out to trace a large circle. Since the two words appeared one after the other in the first three lines (kumbaya Lord), she sometimes did not get her hands raised for "ya" until "Lord," and did not do the circle. On the last line, she brought her hands to her mouth for "my" before raising them for "Lord."
Gesell’s group noted in the late 1930s [8] four-year-olds were able to "sing songs correctly" [9] and had a "high interest in dramatizing songs." [10] These rose from improved "fine coordination" that allowed him or her to makes gestures with "more refinement and precision." [11]
Equally important was the child’s mental development. He or she was developing a sense of symbols, so "there is a primitive mixture of symbolization and of naive literalness in his drawings." [12] Similarly, he or she "is so literal in this thinking that analogies when used by a storyteller tend to befuddle him, and yet out of his own motor experience he can create metaphors which are so fresh and startling that they suggest poetic imagery." [13]
Juicy Lollipop was not just moving to the music. She did connect particular gestures with specific words, even if she could not always perform to her personal standard. When she did it right she smiled while she was singing.
Performers
Vocal Soloist: female child
Vocal Accompaniment: none
Instrumental Accompaniment: none
Rhythm Accompaniment: none
Credits
No indication was given of where she learned the song or gestures. Four-year-olds can be in day care or some other pre-kindergarten program or church groups were adults teach songs. The mother or a relative may have learned the gestures when she or he was younger and passed them on.
Does anyone know if a video, children’s program, or special songbook contains this song with gestures? Please let me know with a comment or email. I have been looking and so far have not found anything although videos show people looking at books as they sang.
Notes on Lyrics
Language: English
Pronunciation: kum- by - YAH, with very short "kum"
Verses: kumbaya
Vocabulary
Pronoun: none
Term for Deity: Lord
Special Terms: none
Format: 1 verse
Ending: none
Unique Features: none
Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: 1-3-5
Tempo: moderate
Singing Style: one syllable to one note; she sustained the last note as a test to see how long she could hold it.
Notes on Performance
Occasion: probably done specifically for the person making the video
Location: home
Microphones: none
Clothing: pink jersey top with large yellow flower in front; pink stripped slacks.
Notes on Movement
She was sitting cross legged.
None of her motions were taken from American Sign Language. They were closer in spirit to the ones used by the girls in the Wyandot County 4-H day camp discussed in the post for 25 October 2016 even though the rolled hands was the only one gesture they shared.
Notes on Performers
The girl had Asian features. Another video posted by JuicyLollipop, this time of a boy, was made in Hong Kong.
Availability
YouTube: uploaded by JuicyLollipop on 14 February 2008.
End Notes
1. Arnold Gesell and Frances L. Ilg. The Child from Five to Ten. New York: Harper and Row, 1946. 225. Gesell’s work was sponsored by the Yale University Clinic of Child Development. They studied the same children every year with a comprehensive schema that included both biological and cultural questions. The term "orderly sequence" implied the development of neuromuscular system followed an innate order, but the age at which different milestones were achieved could vary by individual. The younger the child or the more biological the trait, the more likely their generalizations were to be valid for other populations.
2. Gesell and Ilg. 447.
3. Gesell and Ilg. 443.
4. Gesell and Ilg. 228.
5. Gesell and Ilg. 197-198.
6. One makes upside-down flying goggles with one’s thumb and forefinger joined in a circle. Next, one twists one’s wrists to place them in front of one’s eye by resting one’s fingers on one’s jawbones.
7. Camp Songs, Folk Songs. 514. Looking back, she ascribed their adolescent pleasure to "a certain release that older people get when they get to act like a kid just for a while."
The climbing spider is made by touching the right thumb to the left forefinger and left thumb to right forefinger, with one hand facing in toward the body and the other away. To climb, the upper finger rotates on the thumb as the hands rise for rising forefinger to touch the rising thumb.
8. The cultural factors that were observed in the 1930s may no longer be as true for the same age group because popular music has changed and the media used by children have changed. One always tests their observations against one’s own experience.
9. Gesell and Ilg. 372.
10. Louise L. Ilg and Louise Bates Ames. "Personal-Social Behavior." 238-261 in The First Five Years of Life. Sponsored by Yale Clinic of Child Development. NY: Harper and Brothers Publishers, 1940. 257.
11. Arnold Gesell. "From One to Five." 29-57 in First Five. 47.
12. Gesell. 49.
13. Gesell. 48.
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