Creative Sound Play for Young Learners

A fun and engaging guide, Creative Sound Play invites you to use sound-making as a collaborative, play-based practice in your early childhood classroom—first to transform tricky transition times and ultimately to support your children’s executive functioning development and social-emotional learning. 

The book offers techniques and ideas for every teacher to reach every child in their classroom including verbal, nonverbal, and special needs children. Easy to integrate into all standard early years curricula, it focuses on three basic elements of sound: pitch, volume, and duration. The book features an "overview of the school year" calendar and an implementation guide, in addition to a variety of suggested sound-making activities that start out simply and, through the course of the book, expand to engage children’s creativity in more dynamic ways. Creative Sound Play for Young Learners is key reading for any preschool teacher, leader, or parent.

Author Bio:

Hayes Greenfield is founder of Creative Sound Play (CSP), a sound-based, generative learning system for Pre-K, as well as an award-winning jazz musician, notable film composer, and innovative educator. His book, Creative Sound Play for Young Learners (Routledge, Eye on Education Series, 2024), invites educators to use sound-making as collaborative educational play.

Hayes began working as a teaching artist in public and private K-12 schools. He created and implemented curricula for K-12 students, and professional development workshops for special needs District 75 teachers in New York City. Notably, he created a Pre-K program for PNC Bank’s “Grow Up Great Initiative,” devoted five years to codifying CSP at the Lenox Hill Early Childhood Center’s Head Start program, and consulted at Bank Street Head Start.

Founder and lead educator for CSP, Hayes guides Pre-K teachers in his sound-based pedagogy and offers in-person and remote coaching sessions to accompany his self-paced video curriculum. An exceptional speaker Hayes has presented at the NAEYC, NHSA, A Joyous Celebration of Ideas, the Next Wave Center for Artistry and Scholarship, and other conferences.

A jazz musician, Hayes is proud to be endorsed by Yamaha, Vandoren, and Eventide. He has released 10 critically acclaimed CDs including two award-winning family CD’s Jazz-A-Ma-Tazz and Music for a Green Planet, and has performed at festivals and venues throughout the US, Canada, and Europe. Hayes’ Jazz-A-Ma-Tazz school assembly program has reached over 300,000 young people and his music has been wonderfully received and reviewed in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Wall Street Journal, Billboard, Child Magazine, Downbeat, Jazz Times and more. As film composer, Hayes has scored more than 70 films, documentaries, commercials, animations, and TV specials.