Enchanting Garden Music Activities for Elementary Students
Spring is here, and so is the time for planting a garden. Have you ever thought of using garden music themed activities in your spring lessons? In this post, I’m sharing several enchanting garden songs and games that you can use with your students.
Famous Garden Compositions
First, let’s start with some beautiful compositions that have that lovely spring and garden feeling. “Country Gardens” is an old English folk tune and dance. This arrangement, by Percy Grainger, is great for adding instruments to accompany it.
Find “Country Gardens” instrument play along video on YouTube.
From Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, “Spring” is another beautiful piece that I use with students performing their own gardening motions while listening. Also, you can find this body percussion play along video on my YouTube channel here.
Here’s a few more to add to your garden music list:
- “Waltz of the Flowers” from The Nutcracker – Tchaikovsky
- Woodland Sketches – Edward MacDowell (“To a Wild Rose” and “To a Water Lily”)
- “The Fairy Garden” from Mother Goose Suite – Maurice Ravel
- “Dance of the Cotton Blossoms” – Florence Price
Garden Folk Songs
Next, let’s look at a whole list of garden songs that are simple enough for children, yet also exciting and engaging.
- “All Around the Buttercup”
- “In Some Lady’s Garden” (or Closet Key)
- “Inch by Inch”/“The Garden Song” (David Mallett)
- “John the Rabbit”
- “Old Mister Rabbit”
- “Planting a Garden”
Each of these songs can be used in a variety of ways and with different activities. For example, “John the Rabbit” is a great garden song for discussing call and response. With “Old Mister Rabbit,” you can ask students for other vegetables to make new verses. Also, my students love creating and clapping short rhythmic phrases with vegetable props. See which songs and activities work well for you, your students, and your classroom environment.
Garden Music Activities
Finally, here’s some garden music activities for practicing rhythmic/melodic reading. By this time of the year, students should feel pretty good and maybe just need a review. So, I like to change up my rhythm games a bit, combining a write the room activity with composition.
I print and cut the 16 different rhythmic flashcards and place them around the room. The cards are from four different categories – seed, water, light, and tools. Students walk around with their worksheet and find and copy four different rhythms – one from each of the categories. Then they can choose the order that they would like and perform it on a classroom percussion instrument.
Find out more about this garden rhythmic game here.
I also love using this type of game with melodic flashcards. First, I read the amazing book “Song Garden” by Vicky Weber (full disclosure – this is an affiliate link, but you pay the same). Next, everyone can find 2-4 flashcards that they want to use in their solfege song. Kindergarten uses melodies of so and mi, and each of the other grades has the notes that they’ve already learned. Lastly, students play their garden music composition on a glockenspiel or xylophone.
Here’s a few other review games that I use in my classroom:
Thanks so much for joining me today! Let me know what you think or if you tried any of these in your classroom.
Want to get more spring musical inspiration? Check out this post all about Earth Day in the Music Room.
