Tiny Tots: Ocean Adventure Dive into the depths of orchestra music with our downloadable Ocean Adventure Resource Packet for Kids! Inside, you’ll find songs from Tiny Tots, DIY percussion instrument guides, links to playlists, and more!
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You’re an Arranger! We learned that an arranger is someone who takes music that already exists and creatively changes it to be different in some way. You students can become arrangers with this simple activity. Choose a simple song that your kids all know. For example, Happy Birthday, the ABC song, or Row, Row, Row,
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Musical Thunderstorm Lightning and rain storms are perfect to go along with with a thunderous piece of music. The thunderstorm section from Rossini’s William Tell Overture is a great example of how music can help us to imagine amazing stories and situations. This is a fun activity that can take as little or as much
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Carnival of the Animals Carnival of the Animals is a short 14-movement suite by French composer Camille Saint-Saens. It was composed in 1886 and, when it was written, audiences would have found it to be pretty funny- it is full of musical jokes that listeners would have instantly recognized. Each movement is about a character,
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What is Program Music? Program Music is music that is intended to describe a scene or tell a story. Program music is often inspired by a piece of art, a poem, or a story that a composer has heard but can also be inspired by people and places a composer encounters in real life. Listen
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Melody Maker Create a melody as a class with nothing but a white board (or chalkboard) and your imagination. One by one, students can choose which note should come next in the melody. It is easiest to just stick with quarter notes. Once you have filled up the number of bars of music you chose
Good News Bad News Play this fun game to get young ears more familiar to the sounds of major and minor chords and how they relate to the different moods they often portray. Students will create their own (short) stories that correspond with the chords they’re hearing. When the students hear a major chord, they
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Dynamics Performance Game Use the two dynamics charts below during this activity (click on them to make them full screen) to help your students learn different dynamic terms. For this activity, students can use percussion instruments, their voices, body percussion sounds (like patting their legs with their hands), etc. Ask students to start making sound
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Mystery Choice Tempo Activity Have fun playing with tempos as students learn to feel them with their bodies. Write down different tempo names on slips of paper and put them in a pile or in some sort of container. Create another set of papers that have different body movements on them.Take turns choosing a tempo
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Body Percussion Body percussion activities are a great way for students to explore percussion performance no matter where they are or what instruments you have access to at your school. Follow this body percussion lesson to bring fun, rhythmic learning into your classroom. Sound Exploration Before you start any of the activities below, discuss the
