Peter and the Wolf Lessons
Peter and the Wolf is a timeless classic. There are many musical concepts to teach using this wonderful composition. If you’re done teaching for this school year (lucky you!) this is a great time to plan your units for next year. If you’re still in class, these movies could be your lessons for the last month! Visit www.musicplayonline.com to find all these wonderful ideas!
Identify the instruments
In Peter and the Wolf, Prokofiev uses different instruments to represent the characters. This is a great opportunity to teach children about the instruments of the orchestra. In the Listening Resource Kit 1, Denise wrote words to sing with many of the themes. Stacy Werner illustrated them in the Listening 1 Digital Resource, and Shannon Machtans has turned them into short movies that are now part of the musicplayonline.com resource!
In the movie “The Duck” the little song teaches about the tempo of the music, and the instrument that plays the theme.
Identify the Expressive elements
The duck theme is played by the oboe. It’s a very short listening example. The students are asked to listen and point to slow-medium-fast, pitch: high-medium-low and dynamics: quiet-medium-loud.
Students are asked what instrument represents the duck, and information about the oboe is given.
The Cat song is one of my favorites. The melody is memorable (gets stuck in your head) , and the melodic contour is illustrated as the students sing.
The Wolf is used to teach about crescendo.
The entire story of Peter and the Wolf is given on the musicplayonline.com website. After you’ve taught all the themes, the story will be much more meaningful to the students than it would be without the preparation!
This worksheet comes from the Listening Kit 1 and will be made into an interactive activity on the musicplayonline.com website. Use it to assess how well the students have learned which instrument represents which character.
We are still editing the listening movies and creating interactive activities to accompany them, but even as a work in progress, the listening selections on the musicplayonline.com website are a wonderful resource for teachers!
New at musicplayonline.com
- Staff tool for writing melodies! 1, 2, 3 and 5 line staff
- Rhythm composition tool
- Form Tool – outline ABA or rondo form
- Peter and the Wolf listening themes and story!