Stay Home Music Activities

At a time when we’re all being asked to Stay Home, I’m sending good vibes in the form of music activities for you and the people you are staying home with. Most of these activities refer to groups of people, but the activities work equally as well with 2-5 people, roughly the number of people in one household. Adapt by reducing the number of parts, and putting one person to a part.

People of all ages like nothing more than being creative, so if an activity takes a different tack than you see here, go with it! Staying Home is going to make us all more creative, in so many ways 🙂

Chants and games using spoken voice:

Memory and Making the Most of Ear Worms (memory games, ages 5-9)

Science: Learning about acoustics using marbles (ages 5-12)

Music listening game: Ready…set…listen! (all ages)

Music: Freeze dance (ages 2-9)

Music using digital devices: Play it again, Sam (ages 13-adult)

Pedagogical Guides written for Orchestre symphonique de Montréal:

Peter and the Wolf (ages 5-12)

Phantom of the Opera (ages 13-adult)

Language arts: Sound poems (ages 4-8)

 

 

 

A Boat Saves Christmas

Gale-force winds? Waves seven metres high? Lobster fishing? These things permeate students’ lives in Grosse-Île on the Magdalen Islands, and what better way for me, a landlubber based in Montreal, to learn more about the students’ experience than to ask them to tell stories. To kick off the storytelling, I gave the Gr. 3-4 class a cliff-hanger I wouldn’t have been able to resist as a child, with a nod to the wild weather on the Islands…

‘It was a dark and stormy night. The reindeer were scared and didn’t want to pull the sleigh. How was Santa going to get around?’

I furiously transcribed the story, trying to keep up with the students. We worked and played hard – it isn’t always easy to come to consensus, as anyone knows who has been part of a team – and made something together that was more and different than any one of us could have done on our own. Seeing the excitement on the students’ faces during the creation of the play and their pride on sharing their work was a testament to what the arts do to bring people together.

Les Îles de la Madeleine

To hear two students and myself speak about our project with guest host Julia Caron:

To hear the play, complete with narration and sound effects created and recorded by the students:

Many thanks to Grosse-Île School, CAMI and Artists Inspire for making this project possible.

Happy holidays to everyone! May you all find a boat this Christmas.

Enjoy this blog? Please spread the word :)

Follow by Email
LinkedIn
Share
INSTAGRAM