Eggcellent ideas for Easter music lessons

Spring is in the air, and Easter is the perfect time to bring creativity and joy into your music lessons! Here are some of my tried-and-tested favourite activities for primary classrooms at this time of year.

Create a spring soundscape

Take a walk outside and listen to all the sounds you can hear. What signs of spring can you see that don’t have a sound? What sound would you use to represent them e.g. blossoms blooming, shoots peeking up from the ground, leaves unfurling. Use your bodies, voices, instruments and found sounds to create a soundscape representing spring.

Give a spring performance

As far as I’m concerned it should be illegal not to sing Spring Chicken at least once at this time of year… but there are also plenty of other songs about spring or Easter to choose from. You could learn to sing and play Hot Cross Buns, which fits nicely onto classroom percussion, and will work as a round if you want to add some extra challenge.

Get your Baroque on

There are plenty of famous pieces of music associated with Easter, and for some reason most of these come from the Baroque period such as the Bach Passions and Handel’s Messiah. You can listen to excerpts of these and discuss how music is used in religious festivals, or if you want to avoid overtly religious music then explore some pieces like Spring from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. Moving into later periods you could listen to Vaughan Williams’ The Lark Ascending, Copland’s Appalachian Spring, or Delius’ On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring and discuss the nature symbolism within the music.

Hop like a bunny, flap like a chick

Put on some music and move to the pulse with a bunny hop or a wing flap. Or both at the same time if you want a class full of bunnicks or chicknys!

Go on a musical egg hunt

Hide egg shakers around your classroom alongside signs with different rhythms for the children to play. Then come back together and display each rhythm on the board and see who can get them all right. You might even provide an easter-themed prize…

Create an edible orchestra

Find as many different chocolate and sweet items as you can that make a noise. Small boxes or tubes of mini eggs are ideal, as are eggs with toys inside that rattle when you move them. Layer up some rhythms, maybe using the brand names as inspiration, and when you’ve created your piece of music… you guessed it – eat your instrument!

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