Colorful Songwriting

When I saw this idea over at Nettle's Notes, I thought it was such a clever way to teach children about reading music and decided to try it right away.

I filled the glasses with varying amounts of water and colored the water in each glass with watercolor paint (the kind in tubes). Then I gathered all of the white contact lens tops I could find (we apparently have a lot!) and placed one in front of each glass and filled each with the corresponding color.

By this time of course, M and G had come over to where I was and were very, very interested. It was all I could do to keep G from trying to drink the pink water (it does look tasty- like fruit punch!). I showed them how to clink the glasses to make the high and low notes, and asked M if she would like to help me write a song.

We called our first song "Sunshine" because it had so many yellow notes in it. After that, I walked away and let M loose to make up her own songs and to paint the notes on the paper. (One of her songs was composed entirely of blue notes- she was full of impish glee when she showed it to me) You can see the names she gave the songs have a certain poetic license. She told me the words were in another language.

She really enjoyed it- especially when her daddy came home that evening and tried his hand at playing the music she had written. What a great little music and art activity!