Plan an Arts Event It’s time to plan a musical event! Follow these steps and make some decisions around the basics of what you need to think of when planning an event. Fill out your worksheet as you go. Have student think through the following questions. Below each question are some suggested answers, but encourage […]
Plan an Arts Event 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 »
Vibrating Spoons STEAM Activity For young elementary students, we suggest starting with the dancing sugar experiment. Once your students understand that sound is vibrations, check out this great yarn and spoon experiment from Edventures with Kids that will help them explore sound even more.
Water Xylophone Handmade water xylophones allow students to hear and see the science of sound in action. Follow this easy tutorial to create your own water xylophones in the classroom. Engage your students in the scientific process by following these steps: Create your hypothesis: What will happen to the sound when different amounts of water
Water Whistle Experiment Time to nail down the scientific process using this guided activity packet. You can download the packet and print the worksheet from it or access the printable worksheet directly here. Science-Inspired Playlist Wrap up your scientific exploration with this playlist full of science-inspired music.
Water Whistle Experiment 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
Xylophone Composition This composition activity combines music and math is such a smart and simple way. Children will get to flex their creativity and work on their basic addition or subtraction skills all at the same time. This blog post goes into even more detail, but the basic steps are as follows: Grab an instrument
Xylophone Composition Read More »
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 »
Dancing Sugar STEAM Activity This blog post from My Mundane & Miraculous Life contains two simple science experiments to help kids explore sound. We love the first experiment that makes sugar dance! Sound Wave Visualization with Dancing Sugar Cover a bowl tightly with plastic wrap or pull a balloon tightly over the opening. You may
Ragtime Dance Ragtime music is a forerunner of jazz music and was popular around 1900. It grew from African American musical traditions, combining the jig and march styles commonly performed by African American bands. Ragtime became immensely popular as a musical style and a dance. It is called ragtime because of its syncopated, or ragged,
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
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,
You’re an Arranger! Read More »
