Last Updated on September 27, 2022 by Editorial Team
When one listens to music, they feel joyful, upbeat, or calm. It impacts our mood and affects us emotionally. While music plays an important role, there is a reason why it is crucial for children. One of the eight intelligence named by American developmental psychologist Howard Gardner is Musical intelligence.
Children are more likely to not focus on learning a particular instrument as it gets monotonous. That’s when activities come to your rescue! Activities are a subtle way to incorporate musical intelligence that can help a child with both critical and creative thinking. Such activities enhance their understanding, develop interest, and result in better performance.
While there are various ways to make individuals musically intelligent, activities help parents and teachers involve children in creativity and innovation. Through activities, children get a wide exposure to musical instruments, notes, and rhythms. It is otherwise a tough job to teach how to play any musical instrument.
Find below the characteristics that make the individual musically intelligent along with various engaging activities to develop such intelligence.
Musical Intelligence: Various characteristics to look out for
Musical intelligence is located in the right hemisphere of the brain, and it has an almost infinite capacity for nuance and complexity. Strong musically intelligent individuals are skilled at thinking in terms of patterns, rhythms, and sounds. When music is a regular component of a child’s life, they thrive most. Teachers and parents may incorporate singing, listening to music, dancing, and playing an instrument into the daily routine for children as a brain break or add that spice of creativity into learning.
Musically intelligent individuals have the following characteristics
- Take pleasure in singing and playing musical instruments
- Capable of conveying ideas through rhythm and song
- Pay close attention.
- Can generate emotions like joy and astonishment.
- Have a good memory for songs and melodies
- Easily recognize musical rhythms and tones
- Possess a thorough understanding of musical notation, songs, rhythms, patterns, and emotions
- Can learn to remain calm in difficult situations
Interesting activities to boost musical intelligence
1. Bring Your Instruments
This is an engaging activity where students get exposure to various kinds of instruments. They also understand the difference between a musical and a percussion instrument.
- To conduct this activity, ask students to bring any kind of instrument that makes music.
- For example, they can get a xylophone, an egg shaker, guitar, piano, violin, or even an electric Casio.
- Now, ask students one by one to come and play the instrument in front of the class.
- You can also ask them to say a few lines about how the instrument is played. For example, they may say the following.
A guitar is played with the strings, however, the piano is played with hands
Such activity is sure to illuminate the entire classroom with musical notes. Students also understand the frequency and density of sound that each instrument produces.
2. That’s Our Show
This is an engaging activity where children learn team building while also acquiring musical intelligence. In this activity, they can use different types of musical instruments or even produce music by clapping.
- To conduct the activity, give students time of 2 to 3 days.
- Pair them up into teams of 2 to 3 members per team.
- Now, ask students to prepare a song that is not included in the syllabus.
- They can use different musical instruments or make music by clapping or tapping on the floor.
- Once they are ready with the song, each team is called upon to present their singing show.
This is an interesting activity where children not only learn to create music but also understand the high and low notes through. coordination with team members. They acquire musical knowledge by watching and listening to others.
3. Produce Music
Presenting an innovative activity where students actually become the producers of their own music! This is a creative activity and can be played with large groups.
- To conduct this activity, ask students to stand next to each other in a circle.
- Now ask one student to start singing any song or rhythm.
- They can also refer to different poems or prayers. For example, a student may start singing – Tick Tock, Tick Tock, Tick Tock.
- Once the student is done, the student should clap toward any random player in the circle.
- Now that random player starts the song from where the last player left.
- Now, the next player should begin this way – Tick Tock, Tick Tock, Tick Tock; I heard the big long lock lock.
- The activity ends after each player is done singing.
Such an activity builds vocabulary and concentration skills in students. As students get to add their own voices, they also create a beautiful rhythm along with enhancing their memory-building power.
4. Who Makes the Sound?
Introducing yet another fun and engaging activity where students learn to recognize different types of sound. Music is produced everywhere and this activity helps them understand the source of different types of music.
- To conduct this activity, the teacher should play a recording of different objects and instruments that make a sound.
- Start with playing the first recording of any simple instrument.
- Make all students sit in a circle.
- Now, as the music stops, ask students to recognize which instrument or object makes the sound.
- Students should raise their hands to answer the question.
- In this manner, you can add various types of sounds that students are familiar with but might not be able to recognize in everyday life. For example, the sound of shutting a door, clapping, or whistling.
This activity helps them understand how each object produces sound around them. Such an activity helps them realize how a fan makes the sound as well as different sounds made by animals. This helps them become musically intelligent as they look at music from a broader perspective.
5. Read Poems
Presenting an interesting activity to engage children in music. Students are always exposed to different kinds of rhythms through poems in the syllabus. Hence, this activity involves using different forms of poems to help them develop their rhythms.
- To conduct this activity, print different poems on different sheets of paper.
- These poems should be different from the ones that are already there in the syllabus.
- Now, call each student and ask them to take 2 minutes to read the poem.
- Now, ask them to make their own rhythms and sing the poem in front of the class.
Such an activity engages students to understand how they can give tune and rhythm to a completely unknown form of a poem. It also helps them think critically to analyze the best tune and tone for it.
6. Find my Partner
This is a fun activity while children learn about musical instruments and the medium used to play different instruments. The activity requires different placards wherein different musical instrument pictures should be imprinted on them.
- To conduct this activity, make placards that shall have musical instruments and the medium used to play them on different sets.
- For example, if one placard has a piano, the other placard should have a picture of hands.
- Now, make students stand in a circle and distribute these placards to them.
- Make sure each instrument has a different medium used to play them on the placard.
- Play the music and ask students to dance to the rhythm.
- Stop the music and let them interact and go around to find the medium used to play the instrument that they have on the placard.
- For example, if a student has a placard of a drum he/she is supposed to find another student who has a placard of drumsticks.
The activity enables them to acquire knowledge of various instruments along with their sounds. As music is played in the background, they also find it fun to dance and then find the pair. This also helps build memory and focus-building skills.
7. Search for the Rhymes
This is an easy activity that involves quick thinking and being alert while doing the activity. Music is about the right rhyme scheme and this activity focuses on building rhyming knowledge.
- To conduct this activity, make students sit in a circle.
- The teacher says one word and quickly, each student has to say a word that rhymes with it.
- For example, if the teacher says tock, the students may say – clock, lock, mock, sock
- The teacher may also use two words for the rhyme – Tock Tock.
This activity builds their understanding of the rhyme scheme and how words have the same spelling but different pronunciations. Here, they understand how wind and kind are pronounced differently, and hence, it helps them develop verbal communication.
That’s it..
While Musical Intelligence is an important aspect of learning, teachers and parents should look for different resources to keep children engaged with music. Musical Intelligence can be developed through different toys, audiobooks, podcasts, read-aloud story books, and various other mediums.
These activities are a combination of singing, forming rhythms, and also understanding music from a wide range of perspectives. Such activities help students engage in learning while acquiring a taste for different forms of music. It is the time to conduct these activities and transform the learning environment into a musically enchanting atmosphere.
I am Shweta Sharma. I am a final year Masters student of Clinical Psychology and have been working closely in the field of psycho-education and child development. I have served in various organisations and NGOs with the purpose of helping children with disabilities learn and adapt better to both, academic and social challenges. I am keen on writing about learning difficulties, the science behind them and potential strategies to deal with them. My areas of expertise include putting forward the cognitive and behavioural aspects of disabilities for better awareness, as well as efficient intervention. Follow me on LinkedIn