Last week we’ve invited you for a journey to the fantasy world of reading with your loved ones. Hope you’ve visited some magnificent places, met magic creatures and let your imagination fly away in joyful family moments. This week we’ve decided to bring music to the scene and invite your home team to find out that rhythm is all around.
Curious enough to try it out?!
If you’ve asked the Story Bots some weeks ago about how music is created, you’ll probably remember them telling you about the five elements of music – melody, harmony, rhythm, timbre and intensity. Right?! They’ve travelled through the world of music and explored all these elements while discovering the emotions music unleashes.
This week we’ll invite you and your home mates to be the ones who drive the journey through the world of music, playing a set of short music challenges with the crazy and happy Rhythmiacs music notes in the Rhythmic Village. Do you already know it? It is an educational game that will help you learn how to read music and drum to the beat, designed for formal and non-formal learning settings by Classplash, a jp.inspiring knowledge partner. You may download it from the Google, Microsoft or IOS app stores, purchasing the full version or using the free trials that will allow you to explore some of the activities we are suggesting in this tip. You may also use it directly from our ikes 2.0 software bundle or access the free version available here for this period of schools close.
And now, let’s play with the Rhythmiacs?!
To warm up, we suggest you start by an unplugged family game where each one of you may create and reproduce sounds and different rhythms using your bodies (e.g., clapping hands, snapping fingers, stomping) and daily objects (e.g., cookware, cutleries). Take the opportunity to talk about the sounds, the rhythms and the silences that are part of your days and how music could be made from many other objects you could just reach them…Don’t forget to identify that unsuspected universe all around! And finish it with a group performance with your favourite sounds, objects and instruments! Make a video to share with your friends or just to remember later that rhythms are everywhere.
Then, move to our second activity suggestion, opening the Rhythmic Village application and clicking the Totem 1 to do the Rhythmic Puzzle that will allow you to explore notes representation and the differences between them, for instance a crotchet and a quaver. Do your kids know that these notes guide us when we want to play some music or practice an instrument?!
Let’s help them discovering how, by moving on the Rhythmic Village game to the Listen & Drum it challenges. It’s time to play a drum, a tambourine or just clap your hands and follow the rhythm patterns that are illustrated by the notes displayed, helping the Rhythmiacs move on at the correct pace. Doing it, you will be experiencing and exploring beat, timing and tempo… and having a lot of fun! Aren’t you?!
But there’s an entire universe of other related things you may explore based on this playful learning experience. From math, to geography or history, for instance, here are some tips:
- Explore what percussion instruments are, which cultures use them most and try to identify them while listening to your favorite music.
- Search instruments you don’t know about from your country or some other exotic geographies.
- If you are curious about other cultures and their languages, we may also learn about them through their musical heritage. BBC and radio.net, for example, have lots of worldwide radios in streaming for you, from USA to South Africa! Just check them out on https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds and https://www.radio.net/top-stations .
- Do you know that music and math connect to each other? You may try to find out how music notes would help you practice sums and understand fractions (e.g., a crotchet is ¼ of a whole note or semibreve) for instance.
And if you’ve enjoyed this music learning game, move on through the other totems and challenges Rhythmic Village has to offer you, until we meet again in our new tip next week.
Contribution by:
Ana Mouta, Ana Paulino and Inês Sá Couto are Pedagogy Specialists at jp.ik.
