Finding inspiration can be a challenging task for a composer. Rock stars draw on painful life experiences, challenging childhoods or failed relationships to inspire their next big hit. But that sounds dark and depressing and not at all what we’re about! So today, we’ve got a fun little activity that uses crazy critters to help your budding composers find inspiration for their next big hit.
Adding composing to your lesson routines is a great way to really engage your students – no matter what their age. And engaging your students in this process is so much easier when you have materials that excite and inspire. So, today we’re giving you a printable that will do just that!
Crazy Critter Composing
Crazy Critter Composing assumes you have a basic understanding of how to teach piano students to compose. If composing is new to you, it might be beneficial to check out our composing resource which leads you step-by-step through the process.
Crazy Critter Composing is a lead-in activity to a composing lesson and is all about giving your piano students something to write music about. Before you being this activity make sure you print out the Crazy Critter Composing Cards and the Crazy Critter Composing Sheet.
To begin, sort the Crazy Critter Composing cards into the 3 piles based on their common colors. Get your piano students to select one card from each of the different colored piles. Next, have your students place each card on its matching square on the Crazy Critter Composing sheet.
When each of the cards is placed where it belongs, have your piano students read aloud the sentence they have created. It might sound something like this: “There once was a jovial giraffe who got tossed from the teeter-totter and then promptly fell asleep.”
There you have it… that is your piano students’ inspiration for the next big hit. Write down your piano student’s sentence at the top of his paper and compose away!
Need Help With Teaching Composition?
As mentioned above, our resource, The Curious Case of Muttzart and Ratmaninoff takes you and your piano students on an exciting and hilarious composing adventure. If you’ve never taught composing before, the step-by-step nature of this resource makes it a great place to start.
Lisa says
This is great! My students often have trouble coming up with inspiration and titles for their pieces that they compose so this will be a lot of fun to use with them!
Drema says
Fabulous idea! And these sentences are so silly that it would a great hit with the kids!