Driftwood Xylophone

Wee Folk Art recently posted this video on their Facebook page on how to make a driftwood xylophone.

It was a nobrainer that we HAD to try this out.

A few weekends ago L, Daddy and I went to the beach and tested out pieces of driftwood to see if they were resonant.  We collected them and lay them across two large logs.  Once we played them we sorted them out according to pitch putting the lowest at one end and the highest at the other.

Here is L rockin' out on our driftwood xylophone!  It sounded just like the one in the video!

I collected a few more pieces and we did this for music class this afternoon and made a huge xylophone with rolled up beach towels to go along with our study of African music.

World Music-Asia

 I've been teaching a Music Appreciation class at L's Montessori school this past year.  The children are ages 3 to 6.  Lately we have been studying music from the different continents.

For each "World Music Class" I ask one of the children to roll out a mat and another to place the colored globe on it.  I then ask another child to find the continent we are going to be studying on the globe.

I usually have three part cards prepared for the particular instruments from that continent or in this case country.  Since Asia is so big we have narrowed it down to the music of China for this year.

I presented instrument cards for the erhu, dizi, pipa, ruan and yang qin.  We talked about how they looked and their European counterparts.  We also listened to this gorgeous video which demonstrates all of the above instruments.  The children held up the appropriate card when they saw the instrument being played.

(photo from Google Images)

Years ago I was lucky enough to be given a dizi or Chinese flute from one of my students.  I was able to play a Chinese song on it for the children and then let them all try it out for themselves.

(photo from Google Images)

We also prepared for learning about music from Asia by first learning the notes of the major scale "do re mi fa sol la ti do".  The children are lucky enough to have a set of bells in the classroom so they are all familiar with the sound of the scale.  We also sang the song "Do a Deer".

 The pentatonic scale is made up of only five notes which are do re mi sol la.  This scale is used in folk music all over the world but when played you can really hear the distinct sounds used in Chinese and Asian music.  I first played the scale for the children on this little xylophone and then we sang it together. 

 I set up four work stations on different tables. The first was the xylophone with stars on the notes of the pentatonic scale.  The other two tables had five water glasses which had been pre-tuned to the pentatonic notes.  I drew little lines on the glasses with window crayons and the older children poured water to the lines.  We also had a station where we'd selected only the five bells from the pentatonic scale.  The children took turns at each station.  The collective sounds produced were beautiful and the head teacher (who was cleaning the washrooms at the time ) said it sounded like she was in China town. 

(hmm I've just noticed in this picture that someone has moved the stars around)

This was a simple and effective way for the children to hear and make the distinct sounds of the music from this continent.

Australia

Okay the continent box is taking ages to complete so in the mean time I thought I'd post about some of the activities we have been doing.

I have to say it's been soooo fun learning all about Australia and I have learned just as many new things as L. I also wanted to start off by saying that the reason I picked Australia to start with instead of North America is because even before we began our activities it was constantly a topic of conversation.  We've been Skyping with some wonderful friends there and my dad just got back from a holiday there.  So to me it seemed like a natural progression to start with this continent.  I also decided to just keep our studies concentrated on  Australia for now.  When L gets older and we revisit it we will talk about the other countries in this area.

So here we go....

I found this wonderful site that has a page with tons of Aboriginal symbols.  L and I talked about rock paintings and the different symbols and their meanings.  We then made up stories with our painted symbols.

L's is in the middle.  The cool thing was that L could tell my stories by the symbols I painted. 

Here is the link to that fantastic printout.

Next we talked about Didgeridoos and listened to and watched lots of examples of people playing on Youtube.  We talked about how they are made and that they were originally invented by the Aboriginal peoples of Northern Australia.

We also talked about dot art and looked at many examples.

Here are our own versions out of wrapping paper tubes.
We painted them brown first and then added our dot art decorations.  I painted on the animals on L's and she added the dots.

L really wanted to play like a real Aboriginal person so we painted her with white paint with some Aboriginal symbols.  L was VERY serious about the whole thing and put on a little concert for us. (I hope this doesn't offend anyone.  We have being studying all types of Australian culture with the utmost respect)

I found this amazing song on Youtube call True Blue Wonders which uses the didgeridoo to make the sounds of different Australian animals.  This is what L is playing to in the picture.

You can also download this song and it comes along with lots of great teaching materials.

Today we listened to it in my music class, tapped along with rhythm sticks and made didgeridoos.  They were such a hit that we're doing it again next week!

The most amazing bit is about four days ago a small import store in our area had a going out of business sale and unbelievably they had an actual didgeridoo on sale for only $35!!!  So of course I had to get it and we've been learning to play it ever since.  The kids in the music class went crazy for it and couldn't get enough!

Pics to follow in another post.