Musical Role Models

Meet the musicians! Identify instruments and their sounds then model your own orchestra.

• 1.

  Become familiar with the sights and sounds of an orchestra, band, or other types of musical groups. Attend performances, listen to recordings, look at instruments, and pay attention to the individual contributions of each musician's instrument.

• 2.

  Choose an instrument to investigate further. Become familiar with the sound of the instrument, how the sound is created, and how the instrument contributes to the orchestra or other group. Research the history of the instrument and learn about contemporary musicians who play it.

• 3.

  Use Crayola® Model Magic® to model a real or fantasy musician playing the instrument you researched. Shape the compound with your hands and simple tools such as a rolling pin or dowel, combs, craft sticks, and plastic utensils. Give the musician personality by creatively embedding decorative craft materials such as beads, feathers, buttons, and yarn into wet compound. Use Crayola® Scissors to cut pieces as necessary.

• 4.

  Build the instrument to scale with your musician, using Model Magic and other craft items such as chenille stems and aluminum foil.

• 5.

  Arrange musical role models into an ensemble. Invite others to attend a performance, playing music as the audience arrives and departs. Introduce your musician, sharing information about the instrument and its contribution to the group.

Benefits

• Students listen to and identify the sounds of a variety of musical instruments, matching sounds to instruments of the orchestra, band, or other group of musicians.
• Children research the different ways sounds are created by musical instruments.
• Students create an orchestra or other group of musicians playing their instruments, all made from Crayola Model Magic and decorative craft items.

Adaptations

• To build the Model Magic musician, form long, thin, or unusually shaped pieces first. Add secondary forms to the basic form by pressing them firmly together. Measure equal size forms, such as arms, against each other before attaching. Dampen fingertips to
• Each child writes and illustrates a page for a class book introducing the instruments in an ensemble such as an orchestra, or famous performers such as jazz musician Duke Ellington, who was born on April 29, 1899. Use Crayola Watercolors to portray the Mo
• Create acrostic poems about musical instruments, writing the name of the instrument vertically with phrases about the history and characteristics crossing each letter horizontally. Use markers to make poems colorful, adding music notes and sketches of instruments around text.