Chinese New Year Level: Key Stage 1 - Creative music

Dragon's Tail Soundscape using body sounds (structure, dynamics)

The children first explore making as many sounds as possible with just their bodies eg clap, vocal noises, brush hands together, stamp. Allocate each sound to a individual children, or to pairs of children, depending on the groups size. Help the children to decide which sounds are loudest and which are quietest then put the children in a row, in order of loudest to quietest sounds.

If you are working with a whole class, you can do a kind of 'Mexican Wave' dragon's tail in sound by pointing along a long row of children; start loudly, then each child makes their sound a little quieter than the one before it, going from head to tail of the dragon. You could then try the soundscape in reverse, from the tip of the tail to the dragon's head.

Extension

This activity can be transferred effectively to doing the same thing using untuned, hand-held musical instruments. You can also have fun using just voices, with movement from crouching low to gradually standing tall as the sound grows gradually into a big roar!

Dragon's Tail Sculpture (texture)

This activity focuses on texture, which goes from thick to thin, or from thin to thick, depending on which end of the dragon's tail we start with!

The Twelve Animals of the Zodiac (timbre, structure, silence, tempo)

The poem is to be learned by heart and then chanted by the whole class. At the end of each line, ask the children to imagine saying the line again silently, at the same speed as before.

Next, allocate instruments that represent each animal to groups of children eg the rats have shakers, the oxen have bells. Each group makes their sound where, before, there was silence as shown below in the first line of the poem:

• First the Rat then Second Ox (shhhaake ... ding ....)
• Third the tired Tiger
• Fourth the Rabbit hopped along
• Fifth the Dragon, kind and strong
• Sixth the Snake and Seventh Horse
• Eighth the Goat of course
• Ninth the Monkey, Tenth the Rooster
• Last but one the Dog
• Twelfth the Pig who stopped to eat
• Now the Zodiac's complete
• __
• ©Music-Playtime: Arts Enterprise Limited

The point is to occupy the previous silence with sound, not necessarily to copy the rhythms of the words. You'll need to insist that the instruments are kept still until it's time to play - the silence practice will have prepared the children well for this!