Music-Related Holiday Activities for the Kids
Holidays with kids can be tough at times, having to keep them entertained for the most part of the day! There are tons of outside activities that are catered for kids but home activities are also great ways that you can spend time with your child! If you're out of ideas, well we’ve got you covered here with some music-related activities that you can do with your child at home!
Learn Simple Christmas Songs on the Piano
Get into the Christmas mood and have your child learn the iconic Christmas song, Jingle Bells! We’ve prepared the music sheet for your child, depending on his or her piano skills (pre-reader and intermediate). It’s a fun break from the songs that your child may be learning during lessons. Sing-along while your child plays the song! He or she can try singing along too while playing the song. It’s a good activity to train multi-tasking, singing while playing!
Download the music sheets by clicking on the images!
Crafting
Arts and craft is always a good idea as it involves using your creativity! Kids love to do arts and craft because they can get messy with their hands and create their very own product which is so fun and entertaining! That's why we've prepared some music-related craft ideas for you!
1) Negative Tape Artworks
This is a very simple craft activity that can easily be done with materials found in your home. Simply paste masking tape onto drawing block paper in the shape or outline of the subject of your artwork. We recommend trying to do the shape of the treble clef, or even the shape of the white keys of the piano! After pasting the masking tape, start painting or colouring in whatever colours your child wants. Get creative and make it a myriad of colours! When your child is done, peel off the masking tape for him or her and viola! You’ll get a negative space artwork where the white parts make up the subject rather than the coloured parts. These artworks are beautiful and can be a nice surprise for your child if he or she has yet to understand the idea of negative space and how it works!
2) Musical Thaumatrope (6 years and up)
What’s a thaumatrope? The term roughly translates to ‘wonder turner’ and is actually a toy developed in the 19th century. The toy is made up of a disc that has two different images on both sides. When the disc is spun around quickly, it creates the illusion of the two images combining into one. This demonstrates persistence of vision whereby the human eye retains images in a fraction of a second. A fun activity that is also educational, your child will definitely enjoy making and playing with this toy!
Materials needed are items you will find around the house - a straw or stick, tape or glue, paper circles about 10cm in diameter, pencil, and markers.
Choose an image that you like, it could be anything but it'll be best if the image has 'two parts' to it. For example, we've chosen an image of a man playing the piano, one part being the man, and the other being the piano.
You can download the image template by clicking on the image below then print it out!
Cut out the image in a circle that's the same size as the circle cut-outs of paper you've prepared. Use a pencil and shade on the back of your image. This will enable you to trace out the images on the blank paper circles.
Stick two blank circles of paper together using tape. After which, place the image on top of one side of the taped circles and trace the outline of the 'first part' of your image. The outline that you've traced should have caused the pencil shading to transfer over to the taped circles.
Flip the taped circles horizontally to the other side and trace the outline of the 'second part' of your image here.
Colour within the outline that's transferred to the taped circles using a marker
Tape the stick in between the taped circles and make sure it is secure.
Now, take the straw or stick and spin it between your palms. You should see that from the man and the piano being separated, it becomes a complete image with the man playing on the piano! Have fun with the thaumatrope and experiment with other images to put together!
3) Christmas Tambourine
Create your very own Christmas tambourine just in time for the Christmas season! It's very easy to make, and is definitely a fun activity to do with your child! Make sure to grab these materials: Paper plates, bells, white glue, hole puncher, strings, scissors, decorative materials. Head over to our recent article on how to make the Christmas tambourine for detailed instructions and when you're done, jingle your tambourine along with some Christmas songs!
Games
1) Follow The Leader
A fairly simple game, how it works is that you will tap out any rhythm on any surface that you want. After which, your child will have to follow by tapping the same rhythm on the same surface! Move around the house and try out different surfaces with different tapping devices (it doesn’t have to be your hands!). This allows your child to be exposed to different sounds. If you wish to bring the difficulty up, have your child close his or her eyes while you do the rhythm tapping. He or she then has to find the surface which you tapped the rhythm on!
2) Guess The Instrument
This activity is educational and lets your child be exposed to different instruments. How it goes is that your child will guess what instrument is producing the notes or sounds that are heard in a song that is to be played. It requires some music instrument knowledge on your part, but there are also resources out there that can guide you. Simple instruments to identify would be the piano, guitar, drums or percussion, trumpet, flute, and violin. Choose songs of any genre and play it for your child. After which, single out a musical phrase and let your child listen and focus on it. Then, ask him or her what instrument actually produced that sound!
3) Pass The Parcel
This activity is best played with at least 3 people! Prepare some pieces of paper and on each paper, write down an instruction on it. For example, ‘hop one round around the house with one leg’ or ‘say the music alphabet backwards’ and more. Put all these papers into a box or a bowl in the middle of everyone playing. Then, turn on some music, perhaps Christmas music to get into the holiday spirit, and pass a parcel around. You could also pass a soft toy around. When the music stops, the person who is holding on to the toy will have to pick a piece of paper from the bowl and carry out the instructions written on it!
4) Educational App Games
Take a break from physical games and have a go at game apps that are educational and fun! Singing Fingers is one such fun game that we can't stop playing! It's finger painting and put together where you can record your own sounds while painting on your device. After which, you'll be able to play back the sounds by tracing over your finger painting again and create your own music! Watch this video for some inspiration and read our compiled list of educational apps to try out more of such fun apps!
Bonus Tip
Check out the National Library Board’s website for a list of activities that they hold. Although it’s not a home activity, but we’ve found that they have many varied activities held every week! They range from arts, craft, music, to reading, storytelling, and more! One particular one to look out for is their Jiggle, Read, & Rhyme programme. It is a session of storytelling, song, and rhymes, which makes it a really enjoyable experience for your child!
Practice is a trill!
Love,
My Piano Room
