Crumbs #63 Musical Challenge meets Andy Warhol

Ingredients

• A set of markers and a simple handout (eight circles and numbers)
• A video with different music samples. I have used this one here, devoted to the unusual instruments.

Procedures

• In our case (City Camp), the whole day was devoted to music and in the first half of the day we: learnt the names of the instruments, played different games with the vocabulary such as miming, guessing the name of the instrument by the sound and we made our own shakers. I came up with the idea for the musical challenge to follow-up on all of that.
• First of all, we revised all the colours and we talked about the associations between colours and emotions. We used those that the kids were familiar with (happy, sad, angry, tired, sleepy, hungry, crazy, scared, energetic).
• I showed the kids the handout, with the eight empty circles and numbers and asked ‘How is number 1?’ and the other numbers. It was clear that they had no colours and no emotions.
• I told the kids that we would listen to music. ‘Is it a happy music?’ ‘A sad music?’ ‘Are you scared?’. I asked them to close their eyes and played the first part of the video. It is important to mention that I used my laptop here and the kids were not able to see the screen and the instrument. I did not want them to get distracted by the image and I was hoping that we would be able to focus only on the sound and the associations.
• When the music stopped we talked about out emotions and the best colour for them. Afterwards we coloured the first face.
• Later on, we proceeded with all the other pieces of music in the same way.
• In the end we watched the video again, this time properly but we also paused and talked about the emotions and the colours, comparing our pictures.

Why we like it

• This activity is a variation of the Musical Challenge that I often use with my older students. Initially, I was considering using it in its original format but later decided against it as some of the kids in the group were too young and I was worried that I would not be able to explain in English that they can draw anything they want, that they should be quick and avoid adding too much detail and that we would not really be able to talk about the results properly as the children do not really have enough langauge for that. Instead, I mixed the Musical Challenge with the Andy Warhol lesson.
• I loved the way the activity worked. As an English teacher, I should probably start with the fact that it gave us an opportunity to produce a lot of langauge because kids started to make some comments even during the listening part and continued later, while making decisions about the colours and while presenting their smiley to the teacher and the group.
• The same video and handout can be used with older and more advanced students because the music samples / emotions can be used in an extension acticivity i.e. group the samples/ emotions, choose your favourite, create your own instrument and play some music, choose one sample / emotion and tell a story etc.
• It was also amazing that everyone could produce as much as they were capable of. Since it is a city camp group, we have some mix of abilities but since it is an open-ended task, kids can produce a little bit, the bare miminum (‘It is sad. It is green and yellow’) or a lot more, fully justifying their choices.
• As an Art teacher (and yes, I dare call myself that), it was absolutely amazing to see how well kids responeded to an opportunity to look at the world from a slightly different perspective, making the connections between the colour, the music and the emotions and representing it on paper. During the entire activity, it was easy to see how the kids actually did take time to think about their impressions and how to express them best through langauge and through colour. Sometimes, they would make an immediate decision, while listening and then rethink it and change it. And the conviction with which they did it was a wonder to behold.
• As a teacher of children, I loved this activity because it gave us all an opportunity to express our own personal views and opinions and to learn that everyone, the kids and the adults may have a completely different opinion and that there are no right or wrong answers. So at the same time, it was also a lesson on learning how to respect other people.
• A busy/lazy teacher loves this kind of an activity because it takes about 5 minutes to prepare and to set up.
• For us the activity was the final project but it can also be used, in a shortened version, as an introduction or a lead-in activity to any lesson related to music.

Happy teaching!