Children learn and grow with music. Four exciting areas within Sesame Music Zone make learning fun with engaging activities that progressively reinforce each lesson: Musical Places, Song Bites, Global Groove and Sesame Street Operas.
Musical Places encourages children to discover and play with sounds they hear everyday, such as animals, nature, and objects around the house. By exploring these familiar sounds, they begin to form object/sound associations and learn to recognize patterns. This is one of the first ways young children can gain important musical, thinking and language skills.
- Activity #1: Children visit a farm, the city, the harbor and an orchestra. In each place they encounter different objects and discover the sounds they make.
- Activity #2: Grover hosts a guessing game that uses the sounds they've already heard. Children can guess which item makes a specific sound.
- Activity #3: Now that they've learned about sounds, children get the chance to choose their own sound makers and compose familiar songs.
Song Bites examines the language of music. By focusing on the song's melody, children learn about form and structure. As they listen, sing and play, children can begin to understand the language of music and music making. Pre-reading and language skills are nurtured as they sequence, order, and re-order pictures that represent the song parts.
- Activity #1: Children explore the form and phrases of five well-known songs: Are You Sleeping?; Hey, Diddle, Diddle; Eeensy, Weensy Spider; Home on the Range; and Yankee Doodle. As they listen, sing along and sequence the parts of each song, they begin to memorize the melody, rhythm, and lyrics. (It's a good idea to become very familiar with the songs before moving on to the next activity.)
- Activity #2: Cookie Monster has eaten part of a song and children must try to identify what's missing. When they select a song part to fill the empty space, they will hear and see the results of their guess. This activity encourages children to recall musical sounds from memory when the actual sound is not present.
- Activity #3: Children get to mix-and-match different versions of the same song to reflect different musical styles.
Global Groove is a Sesame Street-style jukebox with musical styles, rhythms, instruments and heritages from around the world. The selections, which range from bluegrass, salsa and waltz, to African drumming and bagpipes, provide an opportunity for children to hear a whole new world of music. As children sway, swing, and skip, they will naturally express the underlying beat as they further develop motor skills, body awareness and spatial concepts, such as high/low and up/down.
- Activity #1: Beat is fundamental to all music, and the Muppets are happy to demonstrate the beat and rhythm for each musical selection. Oscar pulls out homemade instruments from his garbage can and encourages you to play along. Zoe keeps rhythm by skipping, swaying, clapping or dancing to the beat she hears, and invites you to get up and move, too!
Sesame Street Operas allows children to be storytellers, composers, directors, singers, and actors. Children discover the expressive qualities of music through musical 'conversations' in which characters sing about joys or sorrows. As children create musical stories, they are also problem-solving with characters, music, and themes and finding new ways to communicate their ideas and feelings.
- Activity #1: The Sesame Street Players perform three-act operas about ordinary events -taking a bath, being lost, and having a first sleepover -- in extraordinary places like ancient Egypt, a medieval castle, and the Old West. In each setting, children can play a pre-determined opera or create their own original production. Muppet cast members rely on the children to direct the sequence in which the characters sing. Each act begins and ends with the narrator and features the principal character, but it's up to each child to create the musical dialogues.
Music Tips For Parents
- Sing familiar melodies and songs together.
- Make your own instruments and use them at every opportunity. (You can find descriptions in the Sesame Street Music Works parent content.)
- Explore the different characteristics of sounds: listen for high and low sounds; fast and slow sounds; and soft and loud sounds.
- When you hear different sounds ask: "How could we make it?" Use your voices to imitate those sounds and then ask "How could we change it?"
- Invent a listening game by humming only the first few notes of a familiar melody and asking your child to identify it.
- Go to the library or use the Internet to discover instruments, stories and music from other cultures.
- Have a "musical conversation" with children by clapping or drumming. Encourage them to copy you or improvise their own response.
- Visit a music store to explore the kinds of instruments and sound makers that are available.
- Sing or dramatize a favorite book, story, or poem. Explore how music and lyrics can tell a story and express emotions.
- Encourage dramatic musical play by introducing diverse music, props, and costumes.
- Enjoy children's musical performances together, or listen to opera and other types of music through CDs or the radio.