Riverside Primary School

As part of the project Mrs Fitzgibbon's Year 5 class have been looking at the topic of 'Changing Sounds'. We started the session by introducing the project and the students were told we would be working on an art project so we began by thinking about the question 'what is art?' 

We then looked more in-depth at music as an art form. The students closed their eyes whilst listening to an orchestra playing at the proms. They imagined all the different instruments playing. After the music stopped they were asked which instruments they could hear - violins, pianos, trumpets and cymbals! We then set about answering the question "can we still make music if we have no instruments?"

The answer is definitely yes! 

Year 5 were given time to prepare a song in small groups using no instruments or objects and they then performed their songs for the rest of the class. Using clapping hands, clicking fingers and whistling one group performed a rendition of Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star whilst another group performed Three Blind Mice. Some groups even made up their own songs!

The groups were then given the same task, but this time they were given random objects to use as instruments! Paper plates, toilet rolls, pencils, paper cups, elastic bands and even tin foil were all used to produce sounds! We also watched some videos of a composer called Diego Stocco who makes music from everyday things! You can find out more about him here http://www.diegostocco.com/

After learning that musical instruments can be made from materials we find in our everyday environment we then looked at some instruments from different countries. We talked about what they were made of and tried to guess how they were played and what they might sound like.

We looked at a pagang from the Penan people in Borneo, Malaysia and a nose flute from the Nambiquara people who live in the Amazon rainforest in Brazil. These objects are from Eton College Natural History Museum and are part of a collection of objects which were brought back to England from all over the world by an explorer called Robin Hanbury-Tenison.

Here's what Mrs Fitzgibbon's Year 5 class had to say:

• "I enjoyed making music"
• "I enjoyed hearing music"
• "I enjoyed playing with objects and making sound with them"
• "I have learnt that there are instruments that are played by your nose!"
• "I learnt you can make music with all sorts of stuff"
• "I learnt that Diego Stocco uses everyday things to make music"

Next week we will be making our own musical instruments!