Poison Rhythm Game

This is a fun aural clapping game for just about any age group. The teacher claps a series of patterns, and the students echo. Then the teacher claps the “poison rhythm” which the students have learned in advance. If they clap, they’re out! Its loads of fun and educational at the same time.

Musical Pizza

A music composition lesson plan where students will create their own rhythms. They will use the concept of word association. Pizza ingredients put together terrific rhythm patterns!

Musical Tic-Tac-Toe

This is a flexible idea which is usable in many different grade levels. The concept is simple. The teacher writes a tic-tac-toe board on the screen. Then a students needs. to “earn” the right to place a O or X on the board. They do this by identifying whatever musical symbol or concept the class is working on!

A complete lesson plan for a bucket drumming class

A full step-by-step lesson plan for teaching a music class their first bucket drumming performance piece called “Funky Buckets”

The Importance of Aural Training

While most teachers know of echo clapping to be a standard “attention grabber”, music teachers can extend this simple habit into an amazingly effective way of getting students to listen better while teaching the aural/ listening component to any music curriculum.

Grade One Composing Lesson

A composition lesson with simple questions and answers suitable for early grades.

Homework and Hotdogs Rhythm Activity

A fantastic little rhythm piece which is great fun for percussion instruments.

Classroom music resources using tuned percussion

Moving from Singing into Playing

Learn how students can quickly move from singing a song through to learning some simple tuned percussion parts in grade two in a few easy steps.

Fun Action Song for Grade One

Learn this wonderful fun action song called “Kye Kye Kule” to inspire grade one students to sing and play their first classroom instruments.

Grade Three Tuned Percussion Lesson

A fun way to introduce xylophones, glockenspiels and how to play simple repetitive patterns called ostinati.

Classroom music worksheets

Treasure Island Music Theory Quizzes

These Treasure island quiz games will get your students to test their music theory knowledge while they find clues to answer the trivia treasure question at the end.

Emergency Pack Worksheets

This Fun Music ebook provides crosswords and find-a-word puzzles to leave in the classroom for a substitute lesson or a quick five minute filler.

Listening activities for the classroom

Musical Who Am I?

A fun beginning idea for grade three students to get into learning about some early rock and roll artists.

Stravinsky Listening activity

A fun music appreciation activity for junior high school students learning about some amazing music from Igor Stravinksy.

Grade Four Listening Lesson

A music listening and appreciation lesson based on “What a Wonderful World” by Louis Armstrong. It’s a lesson designed to teach more than just the music.

Classroom music resources using boomwhackers

Mystery Boomwhacker Game

A fun listening game for Boomwhacker tubes, suitable for grades Kindergarten to Grade 4

A Video Lesson for Boomwhackers

If you’ve ever wanted to teach or play Boomwhackers, but don’t know where to start,  this video is an online play-along resource.

Boomwhacker Piece for Primary or Elementary

In a few minutes, your young students will be having fun playing this fun warm up tune called “Elephants Walk, Monkeys Run” on Boomwhackers.

Technology and software resource

Using the GarageBand Beat Sequencer

We show you how to get students started in Garageband on iPads then move onto using the beats Sequencer tool within a few easy steps in this blog video post. 

Lesson Plan for GarageBand Manual Drums

A complete lesson for GarageBand using iPads where students learn to create their own drum pattern using a function of the GarageBand software called the “manual drums”. 

Ukulele resources

Ukulele Playing Exercises

if you’ve ever wanted to get your students started with playing melody and chord patterns on their ukuleles, you can do it in minutes with these three fun beginning activities!

Equipment you will need

Many of these activities will need little or no equipment. Some may need a classroom whiteboard or display screen. You will also need a sound system, such as a high quality Bluetooth speaker so all of the instruments can be clearly heard.

Looking for more?

Checkout our four outstanding music teaching ideas for more inspiration!

More classroom music resources: 

If you’re serious about teaching the K-6 Music Curriculum to its full potential and learn more about how all these smaller teaching ideas build into a full music curriculum, you might want to join one of our signature  programs called the Fun Music Curriculum. It’s all laid out step by step and you don’t even have to do any extra preparation to get it started with your classes. You can learn more by watching this video: