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!
Ocean Adventure Resources Read More »
Find the Beat Complete the following activities as you listen to each piece of music on the tempo playlist. Find the beat – clap along with the steady pulse of the music Once the class has found and clapped the beat for a little while, have your students identify which of the following four tempo
Protest Music Start the lesson by having students discuss or think about some or all the following questions: What issues are important to you? What injustices do you see happening in your world/life? What do you do when you don’t agree with something? What are some other things people do when they don’t agree with
Create a Concert Program From the playlists of music below (or from all the pieces of music students know or have access to), have student choose multiple pieces of music to create a concert program. The music chosen for a performance is called repertoire. Some things for students to think about as they choose their
Create a Concert Program Read More »
Practice Conducting Patterns Since most of us can’t just call up an orchestra to conduct, we’ve created a fun playlist so that you can conduct an orchestra you’d like! Use the handy chart below to remind yourself of what conducting music in 2, 3, or 4 looks like. On this playlist, the first four songs
Practice Conducting Patterns Read More »
Musical Graphs and Equations Make your own music graphs and charts. While preschool and early elementary children can stick with simple tally charts, older children can gather data and turn them into bar graphs or pie charts. Follow these simple steps: Choose what information you’d like to track. Some ideas: Is the music in a
Composer Spotlight – Leonard Bernstein Leonard Bernstein was one of America’s best-known composers. He was also an accomplished pianist, conductor, and educator. Learning about Leonard Bernstein is a lot of fun because he was alive recently enough that you can see videos of him in action conducting his own music or teaching all about the
Composer Spotlight – Leonard Bernstein Read More »
Drumline A drumline is a group of percussionists and performers that march and move their bodies while they’re playing music. Watch this video to see the Montbello Drumline in action. Now, create your own classroom drumline. Choose three (or more!) simple rhythms as a class. We suggest that one of the rhythms is just quarter
Musical Storytelling and Kathak Dance During the Kahe Chede Mohe performance below, our orchestra is joined by Deepali Lindblom, a dancer performing the Kathak style of dance. Kathak is one of the seven Indian classical dances. It originated as a form of storytelling and through centuries became more refined and complex in technique and storytelling.
We’ve Got the Blues Use this activity to have students create their own blues story. Students can listen to “I’ve Got the Blues” by Sam Myers to get a sense of how lyrics and storytelling can happen over a basic blues line. Then, using this backing track video, have students create their own blues story.
We’ve Got the Blues Read More »
Music Mind Maps Write the name of the piece and the composer in the center of the worksheet. In the first branch out of circles (the purple circles) write down specific program elements that the music is trying to portray. To use Vivaldi’s Winter from The Four Seasons as an example, you might choose to
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
What is program music? Read More »
