Multisensory Music The best first step to performing music is to understand it and the way it feels. This multisensory activity is a fun way to help students gain additional vocabulary to describe music. Hearing Multi-Sensory Playlist Use this playlist throughout the other sensory activities, or keep it simple and just listen to it as […]
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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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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.
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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
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
Music and Moods Listen to the music in the playlist below. As students listen, have them draw a smiley face or write down an emotion that they think the music portrays. This works great if each student has a small white board to use. Have them hold up their white boards to share their words
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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Animal Tempos Vocabulary Let’s focus on just four main tempo dynamic markings: andante, moderato, allegro, and presto. Here is a helpful way to imagine four different tempos as animal speeds. Activity Step One: Try acting each animal move while you listen to these four pieces in this playlist: Feel how each animal has a different
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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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,
Program Music Deep Dive During this activity, you’ll dive deeper into Vivaldi’s Winter from The Four Seasons. Read the poem this piece is based on. I. Allegro non molto–Frozen and trembling in the icy snow,In the severe blast of the horrible wind,As we run, we constantly stamp our feet,And our teeth chatter in the cold.II.
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