Inside the Orchestra is starting the year off strong with big plans for Spring Tiny Tots: Ocean Adventure! In these programs, children and their families will sit encircled by our 30+piece orchestra and go on an immersive, interactive musical adventure! Let’s go behind the scenes with our Music Director and Arranger, Daniel Leavitt, aka Conductor […]
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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 Playlist All About You For a long time, people (young people especially!) have been creating their own musical playlists to share and connect with their friends and communities around them. Thanks to digital media and software, it’s now easier than ever for people to create their own playlists. Help your students create their
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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
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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
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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
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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
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
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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,
