Fun and Creative Music Activities for Kids
Musical activities are a great way to engage children with the benefits of music while they have fun! We here at PianoCommuters love to make learning about music fun, and music activities for kids we love to share with clients! These activities allow children to have fun and gain a stronger connection to music theory and education. Most of these activities can be done at home, for free, and with items, you likely already have at your house. These can be utilized during play dates, parties, and group activity time!
Why play musical activities with kids?
Music activities for kids are a great way to encourage learning, exploration, and curiosity in children while they have fun interacting with instruments, rhythms, and written music. These activities help children with learning building motor skills, sounds, memory skills, coordination, and reading skills. Most toddlers and children are used to playing music activities in their schools and childcare facilities. Continuing these music activities for kids in the summer, on weekends, over march break, or even in the evenings can help them continue to focus on building their skills.
Why is music important for kids?
Music helps children to be able to learn a variety of skills, helps with overall childhood development, and engages the right side of the brain. There is a plethora of benefits for children learning music a couple of examples include, increasing memory, strengthening social and emotional skills, increasing coordination, cultivating curiosity, increasing reading and math skills, building motor skills, helping with self-expression, and motivating problem-solving skills. Starting to learn music at any age has incredible benefits and will help even adults with cognition and motor skills.
Music Activities for Kids
Draw what you hear
This is an easy musical activity for parents and caregivers to set up for children. Pick at least 3 songs with varying genres and rhythms. Play each song in its entirety for children and while it’s playing the child can use markers, crayons, or a pencil to draw what they hear. As the child listens to the lyrics (if there are any), the instruments, the melody, rhythm, and tempo, ask them to draw what they hear and feel listening to this song. You can repeat this with as many songs as the child would like. Once the fun musical drawing concludes you can ask them to describe to you what they drew and felt while listening to the song.
Building an Instrument
This is one of our favourites here at PianoCommuters! Gather some creative items around your space and you can create some instruments. Your child can play their instrument independently, or you can create your own band with others. Depending on their development you can try to create melodies, rhythms, create songs or just simply explore the different noises different instruments make. Have fun with it and get creative. Below is a suggested list of items you can use around your living space.
Items you can gather:
· Rubber bands
· Tissue boxes
· Empty Toilet Paper/Paper Towel Rolls
· Beads/ Marbles
· Chop Sticks/ Straws/ Utensils
· Tupperware
· Pots, Pans & Lids
· Baking/Cooking Utensils
Write your own song
You can take some time as a family or independently and write a song! You can take an existing favourite song and change the lyrics or create an entirely new song! You can include musical instruments and depending on your child’s development can include writing sheet music for the song. This will help teach kids creativity and increase their cognitive skills. This is also a fun way to just enjoy some of your favourite songs with a new twist!
Musical Chairs
This is one of those classic music games! You likely grew up knowing about this game or playing it yourself. Prepare some music, as well as gather one less chair than the number of people you have (ex. If you have 4 people you want 3 chairs). This activity allows children to explore music by listening to it, moving to it and is fun! The chairs are to be arranged so their backs are all facing each other, seats facing out in a line or back-to-back. You’ll play the music and then the remaining people will circle around the music dancing and enjoying the music. Randomly stop the music and everyone must find a chair, the one individual who does not have a seat is out of the game. When they are out, they can still dance and enjoy the music, and can even help with controlling when the music starts and stops! This is a simple game that is a fantastic music game for kids.
Music Trivia
You can create, or search online, for some music trivia! There are so many variations of how you can do this! You can play parts of songs and pause the music and the kids need to complete the rest of the song, or melody. You can ask music theory and education questions about famous musicians. You can also create trivia questions about their favourite music genres, artists or content their learning in their music lessons. Depending on the age of your child you can make this at different difficulty levels to match where they’re at!
These are just a few of our favourite musical activities for kids! There are so many out there and you can be as creative as you’d like with them. Any activity that involves music will help engage your children and enhance their learning. If you need any more ideas or suggestions for how to keep music around your child in the home you can ask your piano teacher at your child’s next lesson.