We are spending a few weeks doing the letter “M”. This week, we focused on Music. We read “The Musical Life of Gustav Mole” and did a lot of corresponding activities. After I read it to the kids, I put the book and accompanying CD into the workbox rotation so that each of the kids had a chance to listen to the CD and read along. The CD included music from different instruments in the book.
I had bought a Gustav Mole game and the kids played it a lot. It taught about the different musical instrument families and there were various levels of difficulty (something we look for in games so that multiple kids can benefit from them).
I printed a lot of worksheets about classifying musical instruments and music terminology that I put in their workboxes to complete including a musical instruments mini book.
We made banjos and we had parades around the house using those and shakers and various other music instruments.
To make the banjos, we glued three beads to the top of a paint stick (got them for free from the hardware store) and attached (using packing tape) the stick to the back of two plastic plates stapled together. Then we “strung” three elastics across the plates. We also experimented with tightening and moving the elastics to see if that changed the sound.
This little guy (Gustav Mole puppet) was a lot of fun for the kids to find in their workboxes!
