Testing season is upon us, and a lot of us are told we need quiet activities for our elementary music class! This was really hard for me in my first few years. My room is not a quiet one! Though these days I’m helping administer tests, I’ve gathered several ideas for those of you who need quiet activities for your classes.
Honestly, my biggest tip is to take your kids outside. The fresh air is good for everyone. I love to take my kids outside to practice concepts or just have a day of running around playing singing games! However, if going outside during testing season isn’t an option for you, this post is full of ideas for being inside.
Videos
Ok, so maybe videos weren’t quite what you were expecting me to say, but hear me out! Videos can be super educational and entertaining. I’ve got some suggestions for videos that are not only fun to watch but that you can have lots of great discussions with, too!
Fantasia 2000
Fantasia 2000 has some great shorts in it! I didn’t show it until maybe my seventh year teaching and I missed out on some great conversations I could have had with my kids! My kids LOVE the flamingos (Carnival of the Animals: Finale), toy soldier and ballerina (Shostakovich Piano Concerto No. 2), and, of course, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.
This is a great quiet activity for your elementary music students because the stories are fun to watch and the animation lines up so well with the music. It’s a great chance to focus on listening and paying close attention to accents, sudden dynamic changes, etc. I also use this to talk about the characteristics of music and how it affects the mood of a video.
Stomp
Stomp is another video that my students enjoy. They are amazed at how the performers are making music on random things they find, like pipes or with broomsticks. We talk about how anything can make music, not just instruments in a band or orchestra. Then, after testing season is done, we can use random objects, like pencils, tables, books, and cabinets to make a song!
Blue Man Group
My kids absolutely love Blue Man Group. They also use instruments made out of PVC pipes, which can be a fun discussion similar to Stomp. I introduce Blue Man Group with one of their many videos that involve paint on the drums. They also think that these videos are hilarious and ask for them all the time. I’ll use these videos as a filler or reward at the end of class.
Listening Lessons
Glyphs can be an easy activity that helps the kids focus their attention on a specific characteristic of the music. I love these glyphs from Teachers Pay Teachers that have different seasons and holidays. These are also perfect for substitute teachers! Older grade levels can read and work on their own, but for kindergarten and first grade, I go through each part as a group.
Scarf movement activities are so much fun, especially in younger grades! I have found that it takes a while for them to get used to the novelty of the scarves, so before I do an actual listening lesson I let the students use them during a freeze dance or other easy, brain break type song. Then, we use the scarves to show high and low sounds, dynamics, tempo, articulation, etc.
Along with the listening, this year I’ve been keeping a Google Slides presentation of all the composers we’ve been listening to in each grade level. I have a picture of the composer along with their birth (and death, if applicable) dates, and how old they are. Then, I have a picture of the world map with a circle around where we live and another circle around where the composer lived. I’ll tell students what country they’re from, how long it would take to get there, what language we would need to speak, and a fun fact about the composer or country. The kids have really enjoyed this part, and it’s been a great cross-curricular lesson, too.
Technology
Chrome Music Lab can be a useful tool, especially when you need quiet activities for music. It’s actually one that I didn’t even know about until the last couple of years! I mostly use it for fun and as a supplemental tool, but it definitely has its educational value, too! For fun, I’ll let the kids mess around on any of the apps on there. There are rhythm tools, creating songs, a piano, and the oh-so-popular voice changer. This is a popular choice for kids when they are done with the activity at hand. However, you could also use it for composing a song using technology. Or you could use the rhythm game to create a backbeat for written composition. You could also use the piano to learn either the basics of playing piano or learning about chords. There are so many possibilities!
I love using these digital compositions in my K-2 classes, especially in the spring when they’ve 1) already used the computer a lot and 2) need to be quieter in class than usual. I attach these Google Slides right into the students’ learning management system (LMS) so that it’s easy to access. They can submit it (hello, easy assessment!), and then when we can be a little bit louder again we can play the compositions on instruments!
Listen, I don’t love testing season. We’re all exhausted, the kids are tired but also restless from so much sitting, and I think there could be so much more happening in the classrooms than testing. However, for many of us it’s a reality that we have to live with. I hope these tips for quiet activities help in your elementary music room!
