Happy Top 10 Tuesday, blog readers!
I am at home today getting ready to teach the first day of music class to 5 different schools! It is a lot of curriculum to plan, and one thing I know is that I will need to engage my students right from the moment we blast off on our musical journey. So, I’ve been looking for some fun musical ice breakers and discovered the coolest team building consultants out of the UK. Kaleidoscope Events specializes in corporate team building and has a page on their website dedicated to ice breakers. Check them out! (http://kaleidoscope-events.co.uk/about-us/)
Their “body percussion” ice breaker has inspired some great beginning of the year lesson plans that I thought I’d pass along to all of you. Surely parents, you will have a blast making up rhythms and patterns with your children. This activity can be simplified for any age group though the video is targeted to adults. Check out Kaleidoscope Event’s “Body percussion” ice breaker video by clicking: HERE.
The rhythms in this video become pretty complex, but if you’re at home working with young children, you can design any form of body percussion you want at any pace. So, parents, try stomping, clapping, touching the ground…whatever pattern or formula you wish to have your child follow. Of course, increase the difficulty of the exercise with the more practice that they get.
As a music teacher, let’s take the ice breaker one step further. I encourage you all to take out your hand drums, one of the Top 10 Tuesday musical instruments (For a complete list of the Top 10 Tuesday instruments under $40 that will help promote music education in the home, click HERE.) and translate the body percussion onto the drum.
Here is a picture of the hand drum on my Top 10 list. It can be played with the stick that comes with it or with your hands:
To check the drum out on Amazon.com, click HERE.
Try designing a body percussion pattern with your child. Once you have practiced it and know it well, ask you child to play the pattern on the drum. You will notice that hitting the drum with the stick provided and hitting the drum with your hand will make different sounds. This is a great way to differentiate the sounds in the pattern, too. Try coming up with as many patterns on the body and the drum for as long as your child’s attention span allows.
I hope you all have enjoyed today’s Top 10 music activity. For an archive of previous activities, click HERE. Thank you so much for helping to instill the love of music in your child and for bringing music education into the home. Don’t forget to check back every Tuesday for some more musical activites. Until next week, play on!
