The Musical Awakening Project began as a musical program for early ages in response to the great need for a quality musical education curriculum in the country's care centers. For this reason, the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music has taken on the task of creating, producing and implementing the use of several curricular guides with musical activities developed in Spanish that currently serve boys and girls from zero months to five years.
Since 2006, the Conservatory has achieved an important alliance with the Ángel Ramos Foundation and various Head Start and Early Head Start programs, which has supported the initial implementation of the project in 19 municipalities on the island.
Mission
The mission of the Musical Awakening Project is to ensure that all boys and girls receive an education of excellence that facilitates the integral development of the human being. We are dedicated to promoting the creation of educational materials that stimulate the development of skills and concepts specifically related to musical learning to help rescue the tradition of singing in the family and at school.
Vision
Our desire is to implement the project in all educational centers in Puerto Rico from an early age onwards. Our proposal provides the necessary support to early childhood teachers to develop musical activities in their classrooms through professional development workshops and a successful model that includes mentoring visits.
Despertar Musical is a musical education program created by the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music. It arose in response to the great need to have quality educational material in the area of musical education for early ages, in Spanish, and that at the same time could be made available for implementation in educational centers in the country. .
2001 – 2006
The first activity guide was the product of the investigative and creative work started in 2001 by teachers Gisela I. García Casillas, Marta Hernández Candelas and Soraya Lugo Andújar. After being implemented as a pilot project in kindergarten classrooms and Head Start centers in San Juan and Cataño, the guide was published by the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music in 2004. The massive implementation of the project began in 2006 after the launch of this first curricular work. The purpose was for it to be used by educators at the pre-school level (3 to 5 years old) in order to stimulate the development of musical skills in their children. This initial guide was accompanied by a compact disc with 33 songs and rhymes and a songbook.
2008 – 2012
From June 2008 to May 2010, a new curricular development was piloted, this time aimed at the infant and maternal population. During the period, the Early Head Start Program centers of the Autonomous Municipality of Carolina and some Child Care and Development Centers (known as Criollo Centers) of the Municipality of Caguas participated in the pilot project. Finally, in June 2012, the Musical Activities Guide for Infants and Mothers was published - a manual for early childhood teachers, along with a compact disc that includes 28 additional musical selections, including lullabies, instrumental music and songs to play. This work was the collaborative product of professors Haydeé Benjamín Figueroa, Nelie Lebron Robles and Sandra T. Rodríguez Guzmán. In addition, it includes an introduction by Prof. Annette López de Méndez, director of the Educational Research Center of the University of Puerto Rico.
2012 –
In 2012, the review of the preschool curriculum material began. Once completed, the new material was piloted in approximately one hundred and forty-five Head Start program classrooms across the island. Finally, in May 2015, the 2nd edition of the Guide to Musical Activities for Preschoolers, a manual for teachers, was published. This new curricular material is the product of the collaborative work of teachers Haydeé Benjamín Figueroa, Tania J. González Colón, Marta Hernández Candelas, Carlos E. Rivera Aponte and Sandra T. Rodríguez Guzmán together with the co-authors of the 1st edition Gisela I García Casillas and Soraya Lugo Andújar. This guide also contains a songbook and a new compact disc with a total of 38 songs and rhymes; the 33 originals and 5 additional ones to reinforce the already attractive offer of topics, this time with an emphasis on health, values and family.
This last group of teachers, together with Ángel Falú, Kirine Báez, Kutasha Silva and Eugenio Figueroa, have been working with the current curricular development of Musical Awakening in the Preparatory School (Pequemúsicos and Niño Musical). The curricular material created exclusively for the needs of the Preparatory School has been conceived with the idea that it is aligned with well-known musical methodologies used in it, such as; the Suzuki method.
Telephone box: (787) 751-0160
Esthermari Barbosa
Director
ebalvarez@cmpr.pr.gov
Ext. 244
Tania Gonzalez
Coordinator
tgonzalez@cmpr.pr.gov
Ext. 276
Administrative assistant
Ext. 291
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