A Study on the Application of Charts in Orff Music Activities in Kindergartens

: In recent years, Orff music education activities have taken an increasingly important place in kindergarten education and teaching. Nowadays, one of the three most influential and famous music systems in the world is the Orff music education system. In the implementation of Orff music activities, the use of "charts" is essential for young children. However, nowadays, when kindergartens carry out Orff teaching, the focus is more on games or manipulation of musical instruments, and the use of charts to play or perform is less practiced. Therefore, the study of Orff charts should first start from the Orff pedagogy, and analyse the application of Orff charts in the music classroom, which is conducive to teachers to better carry out music activities, the classroom should be the main body of the students, so the study of Orff charts should be combined with the development of the students' thinking, and should be linked to practice. In the Orff music pedagogy, the diagrams are presented more intuitively, make the important and difficult points more simple, and make the children more autonomous in the Orff music activities, and the use of diagrams can guide the children to perceive the mood and emotion of the music.


Basic Concepts and Framework of Orff Pedagogy
The Orff method of teaching music, which has been introduced for more than thirty years now, is very popular with young children, teachers and parents alike.Mr Orff is unique in his approach to exploring people's primitive and simple forms of musical expression.[1]This idea of Mr Orff permeates every aspect of the entire musical activity and all aspects of teaching music as a whole.The student is in the classroom, not just as a listener, but as a participant.According to the Orff method of music teaching, teachers should pay attention to their students and follow them closely at all times to explore their potential.In the Orff method of music teaching, the students are put into the first place in the classroom, to let the students become the main body of the classroom.[2]

Application and Development of Orff Music Teaching Method in China
Orff music pedagogy in China has a certain applicability, because China's classroom needs to be innovative and creative elements of the integration of the Orff music pedagogy of education and teaching concepts coincide with the needs of China's contemporary development.[3] In 1979, Professor Liao Naixiong went to Germany to explore the study, the first time the Orff method of music teaching, officially led to China, after thousands of related scholars to explore and research.After thousands of related scholars explored and researched, the Orff Music Teaching Method has slowly grown and become stronger in China, and has been known by more teachers, parents and children, and has been used and applied in more and more wide areas.Nowadays, many big cities in China have begun to establish the training related to Orff music teaching method, the music majors and education majors of big colleges and universities have gradually infiltrated Orff music teaching method into the classroom, and some art colleges and universities have gradually changed their teaching methods and modes, applying Orff music teaching method into the classroom.Orff music teaching method also deeply affects the music education in China, where the traditional and old-fashioned education concept has been slowly eliminated.This trend determines that new educational concepts will slowly penetrate the current education in China, the education model should also be adapted to the rapid development of the times, the new round of curriculum and education based on the reform of the student's view of one point mentioned that the student should be the main body of learning, which means that we, as teachers, should encourage and support students to participate in the teaching activities.In the educational teaching activities in the Orff teaching method teaching the use of advanced play teaching aids in the Orff music teaching method, focusing on the development of students' comprehensive ability to stimulate students' enthusiasm for learning music, and cultivate students' hands to operate musical instruments or other teaching aids ability to greatly improve the participation of students in the classroom, the effect is remarkable.Some experts have also proposed to combine the concepts and ideas of Orff music education with Chinese localised music, so as to create Orff music with Chinese characteristics.However, the development of Orff music teaching method in China is still subject to some constraints in some aspects.First of all, affected by the cultural differences between China and the West, the promotion of Orff music teaching method in China will make teachers and students have different degrees of discomfort, for example, teachers think that the classroom environment is too relaxed, lack of discipline, etc., and students think that the education concept based on improvisation and creation is unacceptable and so on.Secondly, Orff music activities will use a lot of equipment and teaching aids, but in fact, most of the current domestic educational environment can not meet, so it will lead to a lot of teaching activities can not be implemented.[4]There is also the problem of teachers' teaching methods, music teachers' teaching methods are too single, not diverse and innovative.Because of the traditional education and teaching concepts since childhood, many teachers in the classroom teaching methods are too boring and rigid, which makes the students have no way to fully play in the classroom activities of their own imagination, and can not be integrated into the classroom, and even some students are not interested in music class.Although there are some problems with the implementation of Orff music teaching method, there is no doubt that Orff music teaching method is more and more recognised and widely used in China.Therefore, Orff music teaching method is still very promising in China.

Introduction to Orff Music Charts
Zhang Huanting mentioned in the Dictionary of Education that graphic score is generally also known as chart symbols, diagrams, wall charts, which is a picture used to show the image of the things or processes learnt in teaching, and it is a kind of intuitive teaching aids [1], music graphic score refers to a form and a method commonly used in music teaching to facilitate students' appreciation of music.And Orff music pedagogy also often use the graphic score of the record, to analyse the construction of the music, so that young children in the process of observing the graphic score, to appreciate the music.In music activities, Orff music charts will be used to carry out activities related to the music content of the section [4] .The use of Orff music charts in the classroom is conducive to children's multi-sensory, multi-channel perception of music, which can deepen children's understanding of music, help children to understand music more deeply at the same time, to help children memorise the lyrics, to feel the rhythm of the music and the music, which will help children to achieve the developmental goals.[5]

Analysis of Orff's Music Mapping
The use of Orff music charts is conducive to young children's musical experience, and teachers designing appropriate charts can present many elements of music to young children.The rhythm and melody of Orff music can simplify the complex knowledge of music.Orff music charts are flexible and changeable, teachers can change the difficulty level of the charts by observing the growth and development of young children, and the changes in the charts produce changes with the changes in young children's knowledge and experience.In this way, children actively participate in the classroom and learn while adding to their own learning and knowledge experiences, killing two birds with one stone.Zhang Yu mentioned that the use of charts is conducive to stimulating children's interest in independent learning, facilitating children's easy memorisation of the lyrics, and helping them to grasp the nature and rhythm of the song.[6] Making full use of Orff music charts is also conducive to the integration of kindergarten curricula.For example, the design of Orff charts can be combined with art, so that children can draw freely according to the music, or even create their own songs, so that music and art activities can be well integrated.Teachers can also express the rhythm of the music or the lyrics of the song through the number of shapes, integrated with mathematics, so that children can complete the task of counting, music activities and maths activities are well integrated together.
The use of Orff music charts can also greatly enhance the learning ability of young children.The rational use of charts can fully mobilise children's learning initiative in the classroom activities, teachers can also use charts as a good medium to cultivate children's curiosity, imagination and problem-solving skills.[7]When designing a lesson, teachers can leave the charts undisplayed for the children to think about the connection between the lyrics and the charts, then guide the children, and finally show the charts.During the research, we found that when children learnt songs, they sometimes found that they could not remember the lyrics, and would actively ask the teacher to help them present the diagrams, which also reflected the improvement of children's independent learning ability, and they already knew that they could solve their own problems through the diagrams.

Combine the Characteristics of Different Stages of Young Children set Orff Charts
In the music teaching activities of kindergarten, the setting of Orff charts is different for children of every age.Because children at every stage have their own characteristics, the design of Orff charts in Orff music teaching activities should be set up based on the particularities of all aspects of young children's physical and mental development, and systematically analysed for children of every age.[8] The pre-school children in the small group stage are three to four years old, and the children in this age group are younger because of their age.When setting up the charts for this age group, the level of difficulty should be on the simple side, which is easy for the children to understand, and the focus should be on cultivating the children's interest in Orff music, encouraging the children to express themselves boldly, and allowing the children to imagine the contents of the charts boldly.The content of the charts should be simple and clear, and the lyrics should be expressed directly by pictures, so that children can easily accept and understand them.
Pre-school children in the intermediate stage are generally between four and five years old.When setting up charts for the intermediate stage, the level of difficulty can be slightly increased compared to that of the younger classes.[9]When designing the charts, we can initially try to incorporate simple beats into them, so that the children can initially feel the beats of the music.The charts do not have to be very complete, and we can appropriately give the children the opportunity to create their own charts, and encourage and guide the children to self-expression.[10] In the older class, the age range is five to six years old, and singing in a more correct rhythm and pitch is the goal for children at this stage.Older children can also make up their own stories, so when setting up charts for older children, they can be a little more difficult, but not too abstract.We can use Orff music charts to cultivate children's sense of rhythm, and let them play musical instruments or sing with the charts.Teachers can organise children to explore the charts in small groups or the whole class, or children can directly participate in the creation of the charts, so that children can become the main body of the Orff music classroom.[11]

Teachers Use Mapping to Solve the Important and Difficult Points
Music itself is an abstract thing, and young children at this age mainly focus on image thinking, so in the teaching process there will be some knowledge that is more difficult for young children to understand.Sometimes the classroom may not be able to go on according to the teacher's expectation, so the image and intuitive teaching aids are a good way to solve the problem, and in music activities, charts are undoubtedly not the best choice.
According to the questionnaire, in Orff music activities, children may encounter some difficulties, and kindergarten teachers will use charts to help children solve the difficulties encountered in music activities, and it is easier for children to understand and remember the lyrics by transforming them into the form of charts.[12]Through the presentation of charts, it helps to prompt children to help them recall movements, and the use of charts' intuition and image can also visualise the abstract "rhythm" and "rhyme" of music for children, which are easy for children to understand and help them grasp the rhythm and rhyme of the lyrics.These are good ways for teachers to solve the problems encountered in Orff music teaching activities.These are good ways for teachers to solve the problems encountered in Orff music teaching activities.It can be seen that teachers can make use of Orff music charts to solve the important and difficult problems in the activities, and simplify the music activities from the perspective of young children, make them interesting and playful, which is more conducive to the children's active participation in the classroom.[13]

Olf Music Chart and Instrument Operation
Instrument manipulation is a frequent part of Orff's music teaching activities, and in kindergarten activities, charting is often applied to instrument playing activities.This activity is conducive to promoting the physiological development of young children.By playing musical instruments and teaching with charts in music activities, it can promote the development of children's sensory integration.[14]In music activities, children can train their sensory co-ordination by reading charts and manipulating instruments.
By combining charts with the operation of musical instruments, children are able to improve the coordination of their own movements in the development of musical activities.[15] The development of hand-eye co-ordination is also enhanced as children operate the Orff instruments while viewing the charts designed by the teacher for the children.
Orff music charts can also enable young children to gain interest in instrument playing activities and a sense of achievement.Young children can play the instruments according to the contents of the charts, and correspond the contents of the Orff charts with the instruments accurately, which greatly stimulates the curiosity of young children and their interest in music activities.This greatly stimulates children's curiosity and interest in music activities.[16] Interest has an indelible effect on the formation and development of children's own character and on their lives.Teachers combine charts with musical instruments to stimulate children's interest and at the same time, let children actively participate in the classroom and become the main body of musical activities, which is more conducive to the acquisition of knowledge and skills.Through the simple display of Orff charts and the acquisition of relatively complex knowledge experience, children will gain self-confidence, so that they are interested in music activities, willing to actively participate in them, from which they can gain a sense of achievement.
Orff music charts can improve young children's initiative in feeling and understanding the rhythm in musical instruments.In the classroom practice teaching, teachers guide children to pat their own body parts, such as clapping hands, clapping shoulders, stomping feet, etc., so that children are familiar with the rhythm of music.When teachers play Musical Instruments, they use charts to beat the rhythm.Starting from children's interest points, Orff music charts are expressed by intuitive graphics or musical instrument pictures.In this way, not only can children's attention be focused, but also make it easy for children to understand the difficult point of music.[17]Most importantly, the use of charts can greatly reduce the teacher's intervention in children's learning, and children become the main body of the Orff music classroom, which fully mobilises the enthusiasm of children's learning and exploration.Moreover, the difficulty of playing musical instruments in Orff music activities has been increased in the age of the older class.Multiple instruments can be played together or the teacher can divide the children into groups to play, and the whole class can complete the performance of a song together, so that they can cooperate with each other and play together to feel the joy of the music activities, and the cooperation is also conducive to the development of the children's social nature.[18]

Orff Music Charts and Music Games
Teachers permeate music games in kindergarten music classrooms and combine them with Orff charts, so that music and games are combined with each other as a way to stimulate young children's interest in learning kindergarten music activities.Through observation in schools, it is found that early childhood teachers use music games to teach, which can make the originally boring and tedious music classroom full of fun and become very lively, and the participation of young children is obviously improved.Young children usually understand and absorb music knowledge in the process of playing games.[19] In the process of music games, teachers will integrate Orff music charts, children in the game combined with intuitive Orff charts, learning initiative greatly increased.Teachers can also create a music scene for children, not only to increase children's interest, but also to create a music scene this behaviour can effectively bring children and teachers closer to each other, singing activities or music appreciation activities into the scene, a change in the traditional mode of teaching, will be the new teaching concepts and educational ideas into it.The children spontaneously want to participate in the classroom during the game activities, and the interaction and cooperation between the children will also increase, which is conducive to the development of friendly peer relationships among the children.
Combining Orff music charts with music games can also develop students' creativity.For young children with strong imagination and creativity, it is undoubtedly for them to improve their original ability, and for children with weak creative ability, teachers can guide and help them to make bold creations in a creative environment, and cultivate the development of innovation and creativity in young children.In the music classroom, children will be more active when they use their own designed charts to feel the music and learn the related music knowledge, and their creativity will also be enhanced.

Research on the Development of Young Children's Image Thinking by Orff Charts
Image thinking, also known as concrete image thinking, is thinking that solves problems using images of things and relationships between images of things [3].Most of the children in kindergarten are at the age of 3 to 6 years old, which means that image thinking is the most common way of thinking for young children.In this stage, young children are influenced by the images and actions of concrete things, and this stage is called "pre-operational stage" in Piaget's cognitive theory of children.Young children in this stage do not only give meaning to everything around them, but are generally characterised by panpsychism and egocentrism [4].They are individual-centred, often perceive things from their own point of view, fail to recognise that their own thoughts may be different from those of others, are unable to see things from others' point of view, and are not objective in their view of things and problems, which are the main characteristics of young children in the pre-operational period.There is another very important characteristic of young children in this period, their thinking is irreversible, so young children can only look at problems from an intuitive point of view, and young children have not gained the reversibility of thinking.Therefore, based on the characteristics of young children's thinking in this period, teachers should take young children's thinking into full consideration when designing kindergarten programmes.The activities of young children and the teaching aids used in the activities should be intuitive, concrete and figurative, and the charts are exactly in line with this characteristic of young children's thinking, making the presentation of music more direct.The presentation of charts, the abstract music into a concrete representation of young children can easily accept, the teacher in accordance with the music set charts, easy to accept and conducive to the promotion of the classroom content of the charts must be specific, and must be based on the development of young children's thinking characteristics of the design of young children as the centre of the activity.The characteristics of Orff charts make children very interested in them, and they can perceive and understand the music by looking at the pictures.Therefore, vivid, graphic and interesting charts are very consistent with the developmental characteristics of young children's thinking and play an essential role in their musical activities.

A Study of Orff Music Mapping on the Development of Abstract Thinking in Young Children
Abstract thinking, also known as abstract logical thinking.It is thinking that uses abstract concepts or words to solve problems based on the logical relationships of the things themselves [5] .Abstract thinking occurs in the later stages of early childhood, often when children are six to seven years old, but the emergence of abstract thinking does not mean the disappearance of concrete image thinking.Therefore, when teachers organise activities, while focusing on concrete image thinking, they should also pay attention to cultivating the development of abstract thinking in children.
Children at the end of pre-school age, that is, at the stage of older classes.When cultivating and training their abstract thinking, they are not able to undergo very complicated training like adults.Teachers should be the guide for young children, guiding them to make spontaneous judgements and sum up their own conclusions through Orff music activities.Let the children feel the changes of music by looking at the charts.Music itself is a kind of abstract expression, and children's understanding and perception of music through charts is a kind of training for children's logical thinking.Abstract thinking and image thinking are two very important modes of thinking.For young children, these two modes of thinking are very important, abstract thinking is based on image thinking, is the prerequisite for image thinking, and Orff music charts are a concrete expression of image thinking.Therefore, in kindergarten, the teaching method of using charts in Orff music activities can cultivate the development of young children's abstract thinking ability.

Research on the Development of Creative Thinking in Young Children by Orff Music Mapping
Creative thinking is the highest embodiment of human thinking ability, is a high-level mental activity [6].With the help of creative thinking, people usually reveal the objective things or phenomena and essential features and their regularity on the scientific results after research, forming a new cognitive structure.It also enables people's cognition to go beyond the existing level of knowledge to reach the realm of exploring unknown things and creating new things [7].The creative thinking of young children is not fully developed.Figurative thinking is a way and process of thinking based on concrete images, which is generated through the generalisation of images of things [8].However, through the development of music and other related activities, children at this stage can gradually acquire certain creative thinking patterns.In fact, there is a prerequisite and a foundation for the development of creative thinking, which must be based on an original environment.In this context, it is required that preschool children must also have a sense of curiosity and a strong desire to learn.Therefore, the development process of creative thinking should mainly focus on the stimulation of curiosity and the protection of the desire for knowledge of young children, and the training of young children's ability to think out of the box, etc.We should give young children an environment of respect and protection, respect the innovative thinking of young children, respect the various questions raised by young children, and implement the encouraging attitude of teaching young children, which are all in the process of protecting the desire for knowledge of young children, and play a very important role in the development of creative thinking.(c) The role of creative thinking.Creative activities such as scientific research, invention, artistic and literary creation or technological innovation are all realised through creative thinking [9].
Based on the Orff music teaching method, combined with the ideas of the Orff teaching method and following the Orff teaching method, music activities or through the development of music games can be used to cultivate the creative thinking of pre-school children.Many games can be added to the music activities, such as rhythm games, action games, instrument games, etc.These games can be carried out on the basis of Orff music charts, so that children can disperse their thinking and think freely through the process of one fun-filled game after another, so that children's creative thinking can be improved.
Early childhood teachers in Orff music activities, should make young children occupy the main position of the music classroom, in the pre-school children stage, young children's curiosity is very strong, the teacher can be based on this particularity of young children, in the music interaction, through a specific background, so as to stimulate young children's interest in the activities, but also conducive to the cultivation of young children's specific practices.

Conclusions and Outlook
To sum up, Orff music education in kindergarten is a very important content, through the music of young children's musical literacy and aesthetics will have a great degree of improvement.Therefore, teachers should design the classroom content according to the age characteristics of young children, enrich the teaching methods and improve the teaching strategies.Chart teaching occupies a very important position in Orff music programme and is a teaching method often used by teachers.It is very necessary to use Orff music chart teaching to help children learn and understand music.Therefore, teachers need to use the charts based on the objectives of this section of the Orff music classroom, so that the value of the charts will be effectively played.Music education is now being paid more and more attention to in our country, and the importance of the development of Orff music activities in kindergarten, which is an important stage of musical initiation, is self-evident.In the future development, teachers should continue to learn, try and explore, to find effective teaching methods and related strategies of chart education, which can greatly improve the efficiency of the kindergarten music classroom.From the children's point of view, they can perceive music and learn musical knowledge through charts.From the teacher's point of view, every research and exploration is a kind of improvement for oneself, which is conducive to self-growth and development, and to become a better teacher.In the future, Orff music activities will become the mainstream of music activities in kindergartens, and the use and strategy of Orff charts will also occupy a more important position in Orff music activities.

Conclusion
Orff charts come in a variety of forms, and teachers often design them as a symbol, sometimes as a drawing.In short, Orff charts are simple and concrete presentations to help children learn abstract knowledge and experiences, and to make musical activities fun for children.The use of charts as the main educational teaching method to penetrate into the music activities of young children makes it easier for them to understand and remember.However, in the actual teaching activities, teachers should start from the actual experience of young children, the flexible use of educational methods, so that children through the concrete image of Orff music charts to understand the abstract and complex knowledge, so as to enhance the comprehensive strength of children in all aspects.