Other Classroom Activities

Lesson Ideas for Any Music

Here are some lesson ideas you can try out with any piece of classical music.

  • Learning fractions with musical notation
  • Describing and graphing musical form
  • Storytelling through music
  • Counting along with the beats
  • Writing prompts to build vocabulary
  • Studying the life of a composer to bring the past alive

 

Want some more specific thematic connections? Here are some ideas to get started:

Theme Musical Work Lesson Ideas

Calendar /
Seasons

Holidays Symphony, Ives
  • American traditions
  • Songs from long ago
Appalachian Spring, Copland
  • Pioneer Life
The Nutcracker Suite, Tchaikovsky
  • Holiday traditions
  • Dances from many cultures
Four Seasons, Vivaldi
  • Weather
  • Seasons

Transportation

Slow Ride in a Fast Machine, Adams
  • Design your own car
Pacific 231, Honegger
  • History of Trains
  • Graphinc acceleration

Politics

Eroica Symphony, Beethoven
  • Napoleon's influence
  • French Revolution
Symphony No. 5, Shostakovich
  • Socialist Realism
  • Life in the Soviet Union

Nature

La Mer, Debussy
  • Hear the tides

Animals

Carnival of the Animals, Saints-Saëns
  • Tempo of the animals

 

 

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