At YCIS Chongqing, we are committed to an on-going review of curriculum. We continue to explore and access and implement best practices from around the world.

We’re delighted to introduce ‘Music for Collaboration-Bambajam’ to our school. We hope to explore this world wide popular teaching tool and introduce it to our students beginning with our ECE students and embedding it into the ECE programme which is a play based approach to learning.

Bambajam is an ‘Award Winning Musical Instruments and Educational Resource’. It is an excellent teaching resource which develops students’ performing and listening skills. All the pieces have a great range of parts for many different levels of ability. It supports the ability to allow and promote creativity and imagination through storytelling as well as rhyme, rhythm, turn taking and teamwork.

This week, we have Duncan McKee, the creator of Bambajam visiting our school and demonstrating and training our teachers how use this instrument. School leaders, Music teachers, and the Primary Art teacher, all participated in the Bambajam activity that took place in the ECE classroom. Everyone was amazed at the level of participation and enthusiasm the students showed. The children really enjoyed using it to experiment with different musical notes and in addition, it was a great introduction to the idea of reading music. Bambajam is designed on the play based approach to learning and this links directly with our play based method adopted in ECE, foundation wide.

At every stage of schooling at YCIS, students are encouraged to explore their creativity. We are certain that Bambajam is going to be an excellent tool to boost the interests of students’ learning and support our young learners to gain the independence, confidence and social skills essential to their development.