Hello Little New-Yorkers!
Follow along with this post to create this project at home, and don’t forget to join us live every Tuesday and Friday at 3:30 pm where we sing a special Little New-Yorkers hello song, read a storybook, and dance silly dances all from the comfort of your home.
Today’s project is inspired by the book Your Name is a Song by Jamilah Thompkins-Bigelow and illustrated by Luisa Uribe.
Music is a great way to express our moods, feelings, and personalities. For our craft today, we are creating our own colorful, personal, musical responses to a song, any song (no musical skills required!). Turn on your listening ears and get creative!
Supplies
- Printed symphony template (Print Template here)
- Something to draw with: markers, crayons, or paint sticks
- Collage materials, such as paper, fabric, shapes, glitter (optional)
- Glue
- Device for listening to music
*A note on supplies: If you don’t have exactly the supplies listed, improvise! These projects are designed to be versatile, so feel free to use whatever materials and tools you have at home. And if your final product looks different than what you see here, that’s wonderful!
STEP 1: Choose a song
This project is extremely flexible and open-ended. Feel free to choose a song that resonates with you—for this activity, we chose “You’ve Got a Friend in Me.” Pick your song and press play, or use your imagination to create your own sounds and tunes. Experiment!
STEP 2: Draw, paint, collage what you feel
For this project, we used tempera paint sticks called Kwik Stix to create vibrant colors and smooth lines that reflected the feeling of the song as we were listening. Turn on the music, close your eyes, and listen. What do you feel? What kinds of colors, lines, and shapes do you picture in your mind? How can you react to and reflect on what you’re hearing in your symphony? Will you include musical notes or let your feeling lines and colors create your symphony? Draw what comes up for you on the sheet music template.
STEP 3: Reflect
How does what you created reflect the feelings and reactions you had to the music? For our creation, we were thinking about the quirky and fun tune of our chosen song, reflected by many bright colors and wavy rhythmic lines. “Read” your symphony together: What does it sound like? Listen to the song again and collage new feelings on top or work on a collaborative symphony with your grownup. There are infinite ways to express the infinite feelings embedded in music—all you need to do is listen.
We hope you enjoy this activity! Share your creations in the comments below and during our online sessions of Little New-Yorkers @ Home Tuesdays and Fridays at 3:30 pm. See you then!
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