Holistic Musical Art includes teaching and learning through musical activities of listening, performing and music making in relation to active musical methods and forms of work. Additionally, it promotes progress in affective-social, psychomotor and cognitive domains of learners’ musical development. Not only the final learning outcomes, but the entire active process of musical learning in all three above mentioned developmental domains is important. The main objective of Musical Art is developing learners’ interest in musical activities, the desire for participation and forming a positive attitude towards Musical Art and music in general. In order to successfully plan, carry out and evaluate high-quality holistic musical lessons, teachers need to have certain personal skills and be appropriately professionally and didactically qualified in Music Arts. By being pedagogically active role models, teachers contribute to musically stimulating learning environment and thus affecting learners’ interest, attitude and motivation in Musical Art. As such, this is crucial for musical development, especially in the initial period of primary school. Contemporary Musical Art emphasizes affective-social dimension of child’s personality, since it is responsible for developing learners’ desire, joy and readiness for accepting and engaging in musical activities. Singing is the most frequent musical activity in the subject of Musical Art in the initial period of primary school. It appears in many variations during musical lessons and is often combined with music didactic games, other musical activities of listening, performing and making music and other areas of art. Our main objective was understanding how third graders accept engaging in holistic musical activities while teaching and learning of new songs. The qualitative research was carried out as a case study and phenomenological research in the third grade of Slovenian rural school with eight girls and twelve boys, aged eight and nine. Findings from this research suggest that engaging in holistic musical activities in the teaching and learning of new songs has positive effects in affective-social developmental domain of third graders. Here, we show that third graders express their acceptance of holistic musical activities accompanied with singing songs through verbal and nonverbal responds to various musical incentives, depending on their experience, interest, immersion and activity in the process of musical learning. Indeed, expressing experience, interest and musically active engagement in musical activities are three interrelated concepts. As such, integrating quality and pleasant singing experiences combined with interwoven holistic musical activities in the subject of Musical Art is appropriate, because they affect learners’ interest in musical activities and contents, their experience, joy and engagement in musical activities.
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