Patterns in Music - Activity Instructions

Tune In

Start a discussion with your child/ren about what music they like. Ask them:

When is their favourite time to listen to music?
What songs do they like best?
Can they think of any songs or music that are played at certain times? (For example, carols at Christmas, or the theme song at the start of a TV show.)

Identify that some songs teach us things, like the ‘ABC song’ teaches us the alphabet, and the ‘Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes’ song teaches us parts of the body. Explain that for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, song has been an important way of sharing knowledge and keeping history alive for tens of thousands of years.

Explain to your child/ren that they are going to listen to a group of children singing a song. Play ABC’s version of the Gondwana Indigenous Children’s Choir performing ‘Naba Guatarè’. (abc.net.au/education/collections/lets-sing/naba-guatare-audio/105435750)

Explain that this song is sung in Meriam Mir, a language from the Eastern Torres Strait Islands. Ask if they can hear the beat in the background. Play the song again and together with your child/ren try to clap along with the beat.

Find Out

Ask your child/ren, if you could draw the sound of a clap, what would it look like? Maybe a star or an asterisk shape?

Choose one and draw 4 of this symbol in a line. (Or introduce the Sound Strips here and display the first strip.)

Ask your child/ren, ‘If we were to think of each one of these symbols as a clap, what would this sound like?’ Practise together, clapping four times on a steady beat.

Now ask, ‘What other noises can we make with our bodies?’

Rude noises like blowing raspberries can make for fun and funny music, but can be hard to repeat. Try and steer your child/ren towards sounds they can easily repeat, like clicks, pops, stomps and mouth noises.

Choose one of these sounds (for example, a stomp) and ask what this sound would look like if it were drawn as a symbol. Draw this and practise doing 4 in a row.

Let’s see if we can change it up! Let’s try a different pattern. Draw out an A, B, A, B pattern using your symbols.

See if your child/ren can ‘play’ this pattern with their bodies. Using our example sounds it would sound like ‘clap, stomp, clap, stomp’.

Work through the different sound strips and see how many different patterns you can do!

Learning extension: Explore more songs in First Nations Languages at Yarrabil Bula (abc.net.au/education/digibooks/yarrabil-bula-first-nations-songs/104810588). Listen to the song, find the rhythm to clap along to, and then work with your child/ren to identify other noises they can add to the pattern so they can ‘play’ along.

Take Action

Go on a sound discovery adventure with your child/ren! Explore the house and yard to find different objects that can make noise. This could include:

Musical instruments (cymbals, clapsticks, drums, bells)
Home-made music makers (bottles full of beans, crinkly sheets of plastic, tin can drums)
Percussion (take a stick and tap different objects to find out what noise they make)
Natural items (tapping sticks on rocks, branches, or other sticks, crunching leaves, rattly seed pods)
Other things that make noise (toys, buzzers, clickers, squeekers, fidget toys)

Take the music strips on your adventure and see if you can follow the patterns while making different noises. Talk with your child/ren and discover which ones:

you like the best/least
sound the happiest/silliest/dullest
are the loudest/quietest
echo or ring for the longest.

For something a bit different, you could record the different patterns with different instruments. You could then use an app like Audacity to layer the sound files and create a remix or backing track for a song sung by your child/ren.

Patterns in Music (Home learning)

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