Elementary Music Teacher Blog

Looking for a way to teach a couple major compositions to your students? Well, I teach Peter and the Wolf  by Prokofiev and Carnival of the Animals by Saint-Saens. I use a book, CD and short movie for each one. Usually, students watch the movies first. This helps them imagine the story and learn the instruments and themes for the characters/animals.

I use Sesame Street’s Peter and the Wolf for my younger students. It ia funny and easy-to-understand. There are several different movies for the older students if you want to show one to them as well. After the movie, we talk about the different instruments and I see if they can recognize them by sight. Older students by sight and sound. Also with upper grades we discuss motif.

For Carnival of the Animals, I use Bugs and Daffy’s Carnival of the Animals. There are a few other “less interesting” movies that I have found, but Looney Tunes is fun for the kids and they can recognize the songs quick after watching it. The only problem I have with it is that back in Saint-Saens day, he named the wild mules jackasses. That song is very short and I just skip through it on the movie and give the kids a little explanation of why we are doing that – words can have a good meaning and bad meaning, a long time ago this word just had a good meaning… blah blah blah.

Anyways, if you have any other great ways to teach these compositions, let me know! I know there are worksheets and activity packets, but I haven’t purchased one of those yet.