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 […]
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 »
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 »
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 »
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 »
Peter and the Wolf We encourage you to first have your students watch or listen to a performance of Peter and the Wolf. We like this one quite a bit: Act It Out Next, bring the story to life! Here are different scenes from the story that students can act out. You can find these
Peter and the Wolf Read More »
Singing scales – Introduction to Major and Minor Most pieces of simple music use one scale throughout the whole piece. A scale is a pattern of notes organized in order of pitch (low to high or high to low). In Western music, scales usually contain 8 notes. Sing a major scale together (or sing along
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
Dynamics Performance Game Read More »
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
Mystery Choice Tempo Activity Read More »
Music Salad! Activity Say the name of each fruit and vegetable out loud. Clap out each syllable. For example, “beet” gets one clap, “lettuce” has two, and “watermelon” has four. Once you’ve practiced each word through, point to an image and have your students say and clap it. As soon as they finish that rhythm,
