With the guidance continually changing, school educators are needing to be versatile and resourceful in order to continue to provide a quality education to their students. No doubt music will take a hit with the Covid restrictions, which is ironic as the wellbeing effects of music in schools have never been more important!
Several schools are still hoping to spend as much time outdoors as possible, but this will become increasingly difficult as we progress through the Autumn term. Instruments and materials will need to be quarantined or cleaned between uses, so we need to be thinking of other ways we can keep the children engaged and learning about music!
We have been training teachers at Stave House HQ recently, introducing games and alternative ways of using the Stave House characters to teach tunes and notation to the children. Why not try some of these at your school?
Activity 1 – for little ones
Outside or in a hall, have the children walking around in any random directions being careful not to bump into each other.
The teacher calls out the name of a rhythmic character. The children have to keep moving, but this time to the pulse of the character. So they will be walking like Father Crochet, walk, walk walk, or for Uncle Semibreve, they must take 1 step and sway for the 2,3,4 count.
For the next 2 activities, print out A3 copies of the rhythm characters and attach to boards, tree trunks if you’re outside, or even the backs of chairs. Start with 3 or 4, for example minim, crochet, quaver, semibreve. Place these in four corners of the room or space out in an area outdoors. Explain how each character moves. i.e. Mother Minim shouts ‘wa-it’, Father crochet walks.
Activity 2
One child (or up to 3) stands in the centre – other children at the pictures of each rhythm character. A child from the centre chooses who they wish to swap with and calls out the name of the rhythmic value. The child/children in the centre the swap places with the child/children at that character, moving in time. For example, if they swap with Mother Minim the children take a step on beat, then wait for the 2nd beat, then move again. If they call out quavers then the children jog in time to the pulse. Jog-ging, jog-ging, jog-ging etc. One child can be responsible for playing a tambourine to the rhythmic value of the picture named or a pulse.
Activity 3
Musical Maths – Choose a child and give them a number. Ask the child to make the number by running to the different cards and adding up the counts until they reach the number. For example, if you ask a child to make 9 , they run to semibreve (4 counts), crotchet (1 count), minim (2 counts) , crotchet (1 count) and quavers (1 count), or any combination they wish to make that number.
Stave House teachers testing some outdoor activities