World Oceans Day, celebrated on 8 June, provides a useful starting point for music lessons linked to nature, creativity, and environmental awareness. The ocean can inspire listening, singing, composing, improvising, and notation activities across the primary age range.
Listening
Start by introducing pupils to contrasting pieces of music inspired by the sea such as Debussy’s La Mer, Mendlessohn’s Hebrides Overture and Binge’s Sailing By. Encourage pupils to describe what they hear using musical vocabulary such as tempo, dynamics, pitch, and texture, and discuss how the composers use these to create the scene.
Performing
Use Sea Shanties to develop your pupil’s ensemble singing abilities. Songs such as The Wellerman have a strong rhythmic impetus, which will help your pupils develop their sense of the difference between pulse and rhythm, and help them to keep to a steady tempo. Clap or stamp in time to the beat to feel the pulse.
Use the idea of waves to develop instrumental control with classroom percussion instruments. Use shakers, scrapers, cymbals and drums to practise a gradual crescendo and diminuendo, mirroring the shape of a wave as it builds, crashes and dies away. Play ascending and descending scales on the glockenspiel or xylophone, focusing on striking each note precisely and clearly on the way up and down.
Composing & Improvising
Pupils can explore ways to represent sounds of the sea using classroom percussion, and create short sequences of sound to describe the sea in different states such as calm, choppy, or stormy. These can then be strung together to create a ‘day in the life of the sea’ composition showing the effect that changes in weather have on the sounds of the sea.
Notation
World Oceans Day can also support notation work. Rhythm activities using words such as “dol-phin,” “oc-to-pus,” or “jelly-fish” help reinforce rhythmic understanding. Pupils could use this vocabulary to compose short rhythmic or melodic patterns inspired by the sea and record them using stick notation, rhythm grids, or stave notation.
Dr Liz Stafford, June 2026. Copyright © 2026 Music Education Solutions Limited. All Rights Reserved.
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