Music - Animal Concert

• Review this lesson plan and choose what you need from the Teacher Support box.

• If necessary, pre-teach these related vocabulary words: animal sounds, compose, concert, melody, safari.

• Consider the abilities and backgrounds of all your students and decide when and how to introduce and differentiate lesson content, activities, or concepts.

• This lesson is designed to be used with the Coding Express app. Download the app for student devices at legoeducation.com/downloads.

• To use this lesson without the Coding Express app, see the unplugged version.

• Ask the students if they know what sounds different animals make.

• Have them try to imitate some of these sounds.

• Pick a song about animals that is well-known to your class and sing and/or dance to it.

• Tell the students that the safari bus is full of kindergartners today.

• They’re going to a concert performed by forest animals!

• Would you like to join them and meet all of the animal singers?

• Build the safari bus and a train track (an O-shaped track is recommended).

• Now experiment with the app.

• Put the safari bus on the track and allow the students to explore the different functions of each button.

• Place one action brick of each color on the track.

• Have the students take turns using the app to “drive” the bus.

• What happens after the bus passes each action brick?

• Talk to the students about the sounds they’ve just heard.

• Ask questions like:

  • What did you hear when the bus went over the action bricks?
  • Did you know those animal sounds?
  • What animals did you hear? (Ask the students to build the animals they’ve named.)

• Ask the students to place each animal next to its action brick.

• Use the app to see if the sound matches the animals they have built.

• Now you’re going to make your own animal concert!

• Have the students place the action bricks in any order on the track to compose their own music!

• Talk to the students about their composition.

• Ask them what they’d like to express with their music (e.g., happiness, excitement, nice weather).

• Encourage the students to sing and dance to their music.

• Stuffed animals or similar toys can be used as props for their performance.

• Ask guiding questions to elicit students’ thinking and their decisions while ideating, building, and programming.

Observation Checklist

• Review the learning objectives and educational standards addressed in this lesson (Teacher Support box).

• Share specific student responses and behaviors at different levels of mastery.

• Use the following checklist to observe students’ progress:

  • Students can describe the repeating pattern of the sounds on the track as a loop.
  • Students can design simple sequences to compose a simple melody.
  • Students can express their thoughts, feelings, and ideas clearly.

• Use this lesson’s format to create lessons for the Music Band in the app. Involve different instruments in the Engage phase discussion and explore more interesting sounds with your kindergartners.

• For a more challenging music lesson, try Are you sleeping Brother John?

  1. Investigate the melody of each action brick.
  2. Sequence the action bricks to match the song.
  3. Compose a new song by remixing the action bricks.