The ‘Rite of Spring': Musical Activities for the Spring Holidays
With the spring holidays on the horizon after another incredibly busy term, it’s time for a well-earned rest! Having completed half term assessments, and built upon skills and knowledge in your music classes, it's worth taking a moment and remembering that whilst we want to support pupils’ academic attainment of music, it’s still really important to empower children to engage in music for pure enjoyment. The holidays are an excellent time to think about some musical activities that your pupils can get involved in, and we’ve got just the thing for it…!
What is Musical Families?
Our Musical Families area is packed full of fun, musical activities that pupils can carry out at home. It's a great way to keep the momentum of music building outside of school and with so many activities to choose from, pupils can engage themselves in musical education tailored to their interests. You’ll find the Musical Families tab under ‘Home Learning’ on the Get Set 4 Education homepage, and it's free for families to access without a login. We’ve crafted plenty of engaging musical activities for pupils to continue building their musical skills across those 3 key areas of the national curriculum…even when they’re on holiday!
Why it’s important
Making progress in music isn’t just about being able to answer questions in class using the inter-related dimensions of music or being able to identify instruments in a listening piece… it’s so much more! Immersion in not only music, but sound as a whole entity is hugely important to supporting musical development and developing a long-lasting love of music.
Our Musical Families activities encourage pupils to immerse themselves in music in an interactive way. Through these activities and without realising, pupils will be cultivating their own musical tastes and getting creative with musical output in response to our activities; skills that will stay with them for life. Encouraging pupils to incorporate music-making into their lives outside of the classroom can have such a positive impact on their mental health, creative flair and musical attainment.
Whilst we aren’t suggesting pupils spend the entire spring holidays studying Stravinsky’s ‘Rite of Spring’ just because the title is fitting for the time of year, we do have plenty of activities that fit nicely with the spring time! We’ve picked out some of our favourite ‘Spring’ suggestions from our Musical Families area in each key stage that your pupils might enjoy engaging in over the holidays. Come rain or shine, there’s plenty of musical fun to get involved with!
EYFS
Bird Song: Thinking about animals making music is a lovely way to consider sounds. Mimicking familiar noises is perfect for developing Call & Response techniques and being able to identify differences in pitches. There’s a fun creative task associated with this one if your pupils are in the mood for some arts and crafts!
Music In Nature: This is a great activity to explore common, known sounds. It’s a lovely way to immerse young pupils in exploring timbres through movement, too. This one is particularly active, and depending on the weather, wellies might be advisable!
Nature’s Orchestra: In class, there are so many activities related to identifying instruments of a Western Orchestra, but why not get creative with the concept of an orchestra itself?! Encouraging pupils to consider sounds in the environment as an ‘orchestra’ is an immersive and interactive way of noticing how sounds and music are in every corner of the world. This is a great one to explore in the local park or on a wander to the shops!
KS1
Musical Scavenger Hunt: Our scavenger hunt can be completed indoors or outdoors… whatever the weather! This activity focuses on tuning the ear to different pitches. Pupils often explore this through pitched activities so this is a great opportunity to listen out for the pitches of unpitched, everyday objects that are sonorous!
Woodland Sounds: The perfect activity for letting out some pent up energy whilst keeping attuned to the sounds in the environment. Connecting with your surroundings through sound is a great mindful activity to keep pupils grounded and develop an awareness of sound being all around. A great activity to observe through the seasons and hearing sounds change.
Let’s make a Noise: Pupils can get creative by using every-day objects as instruments. If the sun is shining, why not explore sound in the park? Encourage pupils to choose objects that create different sounds when struck with something (a pen, stick or spoon are good options!) If April showers are out, why not brave the outdoors with a raincoat and wellies?!
KS2
Musical Scavenger Hunt: Pupils can use this activity to inspire their own spring compositions! By exploring music that showcases contrasting dynamics, tempi and textures, pupils can then use these ideas to inform their own creativity- a great opportunity to hear the inter-related dimensions of music in listening pieces to inspire creative compositions!
Music Grids: This activity involves using household items to explore pitch and rhythm, but can easily be taken outside into the sunshine! Why not combine finding objects both indoors and outdoors to compare the timbres? If all the family are involved, pupils can really see the effects of layering polyrhythms and timbres to create a polyphonic texture of sounds in the environment.
Stomp: A rhythm-based activity that can easily be done in the garden or the park! Using a variety of natural objects in the environment is a great way to explore the different timbres that natural objects can make- instruments don’t need to be pitched to create different timbres!
Sharing
You might want to let your pupils and their families explore which activities they’d like to engage in over the holidays or, you may wish to assign a few of the above as some light, spring holiday tasks! We really believe it’s important that music-making extends outside of the classroom, but isn’t a separate entity. Encourage your pupils to take pictures or record their music-making to share when term starts again. It’s a lovely way to create a musical community, share creative ideas and take pride in their musical output. It could even make for a nice display!