The Symphonic Forest
At the start of music last week, Division 18 watched a video of an orchestra performing. And later that class we went to explore the sounds of the magic forest. During that exploration the students discovered various timbres that could be produced with the forest–i.e., crunching leaves, stomping feet, scratching bark, etc. They were so excited by their discoveries that they wanted to return the following week to make music again with the forest. Upon returning the children made a connection to the video of the orchestra and wanted to make music with the landscape like it was an orchestra. The students broke off into smaller groups, like the sections of the orchestra and began creating sounds together. They have a section for shaking leaves, one for tapping pinecones, one for sliding feet, and another for tapping sticks. Similar to how different parts of the orchestra play at different times, the students also came up with different entrances and cut offs for each section of their nature-like ensemble. Below is a video of them performing their piece.