It can be hard to find good activities to keep kids engaged in your elementary music class. Especially at the end of the year. I don’t want to start a brand new concept right before the end of the year. But I don’t want to completely throw in the towel and just show movies for the last week.
I have found that activities that incorporate movement, collaboration or creativity tend to be a great way to go for the last weeks of school. Below I have included some of the activities that I have done in the past. They have been really fun to teach and fun for my students as well.
Elementary Music Activities For the End of the Year
Do a Survey
Often at the end of the year I will give my students a survey to get some feedback about the year. I’ve done this with multiple grade levels and also with my chorus group. Some sample question might include:
- What was your favorite thing we did this year?
- What do you wish we had done more?
- What is one thing you learned this year?
- One thing I would like to tell Mrs. Tabler is …
I would like to note that if you want an accurate sampling of what kids liked, you should have a list of the main things you did that year. Otherwise they will mostly just remember what you done recently. And that really help you know about stuff from the rest of the year. Having an open ended question at the end is just fun, because students can use it to tell me anything they want. I just tell students anything they write needs to be school appropriate and shouldn’t be rude.
Surveys are a great activity to use at the end of the year to get an idea about what students did and didn’t like. And it may also help you think of what new things to add in next year.
Play It Again
For my younger grades, I do a simplified version of the survey. Instead of questions, I just list some of the activities and songs that we did this year. Then they get to vote on which ones we will do. I pick activities where I don’t have to unpack a bunch of stuff that I’ve already put away in order to do the activity. And the kids feel like they are picking their own adventure.
Music Olympics
This is a great way to review material that you’ve learned throughout the year. And you can tailor it to be anything that you want. Basically, you have students create teams and then compete to show their musical knowledge in a series of events. Some events that I have used in the past include:
- Rhythm Racer
- Recorder Translator
- Vocabulary Toss
- Football Frenzy (this comes from a SMARTboard game that I will tell you about later in this post).
You can read about these events in my post about Music Olympics.
I’ve also tried some other events since then:
Composer Splat
The teacher reads a statement. There are 2 composers on the board. Students have to throw a beanbag at the correct composer AND have it actually hit them. Ideally this is done on a SMARTboard, so when it hits, it “clicks” that composer and indicates if it is the correct answer. But if you are like me and either don’t have a SMARTboard or have one that is broken, you can just eyeball it and the game works just as well, if a little less flashy.
Staff Telephone
This game is played like the game telephone. The team sits in a line. The head of each line looks at a flashcard, which will have a note name on it. Then they must pass that information down the line by whispering it, and then the last person has to note the note on the staff rug. If you don’t have a staff rug, you could easily have them notate on the whiteboard or SMARTboard instead.
A Note On Creating Teams: I recommend allowing students to pick one partner, and then you pair up the sets of partners to make groups of 4. Otherwise, groups can sometimes become really uneven, with one group having the “know-it-alls” and everyone getting really frustrated as they win everything. I think it is important to have a diverse set of challenges in your Olympics so that everyone has something they can excel at.
Extend a Lesson to Explore Creativity
Take a lesson where you’ve learned a skill and take it a step farther to allow students to create. For example, I do a unit where we have been learn to read MI-RE-DO patterns, and we had a song that had the pattern MI-RE-DO in it. We’ve been playing and reading the pattern on xylophones, but as an extension, I might have students try and make up a different pattern using MI-RE-DO and play it in that spot of the song. We would take turns hearing and trying different students ideas and also determine what it would look like in music notation. You could reverse it as well. You could PLAY a pattern and have them figure out the correct solfege.
This is just one example of how you might extend a lesson. You could also take a book and act it out, or create a dance to a familiar song. Creativity can be in the form of movement, not just tonal or rhythmic exploration.
Music Madness and Percussion Parade
If you’ve never checked out any products created by Artie Almeida, you absolutely should! She is so creative and engaging in the activities she creates. Her slogan says it all: “Heavy academics delivered joyfully.” You can’t do this stuff without having a ton of fun! Two of my favorites for end of the year fun are Music Madness, a SMARTboard resources with lots of musical games for different age groups, and Percussion Parade, a book full of fun activities you can do with simple percussion (great for if you want to get your xylophones and such packed away for the end of the year).
You can read more about some of my favorite Music Madness Games here.
I hope this gives you some ideas for elementary music activities you can use for the end of the year to make those last couple weeks fun for everyone!
More Blog Posts With End of the Year Activities for Music Class
5 Quiet Elementary Music Activities to Use During Testing Season – End of the year means end of the year testing. Keep teaching music (quietly) with these fun lesson ideas.
10 Terrific John Williams Music Activities for Elementary Students – I love John Williams any time of the year, but especially at the end of the year. Kick it off on May the Fourth and keep the fun rolling through the end of the year.
