Happy Holidays! It’s almost winter break, but before we make it to the end of the first half of the school year, we must make it through the holiday season, where kids are overly sugared, teachers are exhausted from the grueling performance season, and everyone’s brain is already on vacation. So what to do?
This is a great time for fun activities. Simple activities. Ones that don’t require lots of prep. And of course, it always helps if the activity has a seasonal theme. Enter this awesome video by one of my awesome colleagues, Sydney Johnson. This YouTube video of March from the Nutcracker has great, easy to follow visuals that animate along with the music.
You can use this video simply to teach the musical form of the Nutcracker, or you could build off of this video and branch out. For example, you could:
- have questions about musical elements (dynamics, etc) during different parts of the song and they have to answer them as they follow along with the video
- create movements for each section and perform
- use as a preview of the form before doing this fun KidStix activity by Artie Almeida
- create a xylophone or recorder accompaniment to the A section
- do a cup/stick/stone passing game
Bottom line is, this video is a great and easy to use resource that I love and wanted to share with you. Thank you, Sydney for creating this resource, sharing it, and allowing me to share it!
EDIT: Also, check out the Ready GO Music channel for more musical form videos as well as rhythm reading videos set to music. She has really expanded her selection of videos since this post originally aired, and I am fairly positive there are a bunch more in the works as well.
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