Chinese New Year Level: Early Grades - Listening, appraising & movement

Be a Dragon! (tempo, pulse)

Choose one child to be the dragon's head, wearing a dragon hat or mask that you have previously made. As you all listen to the Chinese Festival music, the children dance in a space on their own, pretending to be dragons. Only the child with the dragon's head moves around the room and each child she passes by joins the chain as the children, one by one, hold each other round round the waist, becoming a long dragon in a procession. Ideally, every child will take a turn at being the dragon's head over the next few days.

Which Animal? (pitch)

First ask the children to listen to the music and to stretch up high when they hear high sounds and crouch down low then they hear low sounds. You will need to model this as the children join in with you because many children of this age will have no concept of low and high pitch in music.

Before the next part of the activity, you'll need to have shown the children pictures or videos of the animals of the Chinese Zodiac, and discussed how they sound and move. As the children listen again, ask them to move around the room pretending to be the animal they think of when they hear the music. You could circulate and guess which animal each child is being, asking individual children to show what they were doing, for others to guess too.

Pentatonic Tune by Bartok (played on piano, which has become a very popular instrument in China).

The Panda

This Chinese music is about everyone's favorite bear, The Panda!