Colour Song Writing

Lately, my kids have been completely enthralled with music, instruments, and singing. They've created stages to perform songs, recorded themselves playing instruments, and sang at the top of their lungs.

Today, we used the old water-in-jars trick to create our own tunes, but with an extra twist. We added food colouring to the jars so each was a different colour.

Next, each child got a card with circles on it. They "composed" a song by colouring in the circles according to the colour of the water in the jar they wanted to "play."

When they were finished, they played their song!

We used a recordable photo album to record our songs. We took photos of ourselves playing our songs so we could put them in the photo album with our recorded songs.

Our song cards, photos, and album are now on display just outside the classroom for others to see and listen to.

This project was pretty successful. Both boys and girls were interested in taking part, even for just a few short minutes. My class is mostly boys, so I'm often trying to figure out ways to get them to do mark making and art projects. Since they've been so interested in music lately, I thought this would be a great way to get a crayon in their hand, while engaging their interest in music. The recordable album was a big hit too. They loved listening to their song (and in some cases, their voices as well!). They thought it was pretty funny to hear themselves; some were convinced it wasn't them because it didn't quite sound right. All in all, Colour Song Writing was a loud, colourful, and engaging activity!