This year for Christmas Camp students became familiar with the popular music suite by Camille Saint Saens, Carnival of the Animals.
Students focused on their ear training and listening skills by first listening and guessing which animal was being featured in each piece. Then students listened for particular instruments, tempo's, dynamics and melodic characteristics. The younger students acted out some of the animals they were learning about as you can see in some of the pictures below. We learned more about the composer, Camille Saint Saens and played a fun BINGO listening game after becoming familiar with each animal piece. After hearing the track of a particular animal that I would play on the CD, they would mark their BINGO sheet as to which animals it was. Everyone did a great job!
For our breaks each day we made an animal craft (animal scratch ornament and sun catcher) each student was able to take home.
Now we can't forget that this is Christmas camp so we had to have some Christmas activities of course! We played Guess the Christmas carol rhythm (harder than you might think), learned several songs with Boomwhackers and performed Christmas pieces on the piano for each other. We ended our Christmas camp with a traditional game of Name that Christmas Tune.
Please take a moment to watch our video featuring students perform a Christmas piece on the Boomwhackers: http://youtu.be/NScwXs5ezcM
Have a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
