Instrumental Learning Arts Award Discover
If you would like to complete our Arts Award Discover for Instrumental Learners at home, please contact krista.ribbons@norfolk.gov.uk to discuss the submission of your award and certification.
BBC Teach
- BBC schools radio has a large catalogue of videos, audio resources and music activities for the KS1 & KS2 age groups.
Each series of resources explores popular topics or related areas of the curriculum. The content is ideal for the non-specialist teacher, offering a mix of materials with clear instructions on how and what to do, and providing a term’s worth of music activity. There are opportunities to sing, take part in music activities, appraise music, with suggestions for composition included in the comprehensive Teacher Notes. - BBC Ten Pieces opens up the world of classical music to children. There are lesson plans and resources bursting with ideas for how to get children to be creative with inspirational classical pieces. For each piece you will find free teaching resources, exciting short films, lesson plans, arrangements and more. Check out Ten Pieces At Home for weekly resources and creative activities.
- Interactive Lessons: Get creative with Tchaikovsky’s ‘The Nutcracker’ in this Ten Pieces Live Lesson for 7-11s, full of dance, movement and characterisation. It was created in collaboration with the Royal Opera House and The Royal Ballet School, and shows pupils how to create their own original dance moves.
- Trailblazers challenges students to rethink orchestral music – what it sounds like, who can make it, and how it’s used – through ten trailblazing composers and their pieces of music. Discover Trailblazers with six weeks of learning and activities, customisable to you, aided by PowerPoint presentations.
- 5 musical ideas to try with children at home: These simple ideas will help keep little ones occupied while encouraging them to explore and learn about music.
BBC Bitesize – KS2
BBC Bitesize helps students learn by providing “bitesized” interactive content, video and audio summaries and mock exams.
Sing up
Sing Up have some free resources to keep children learning and singing outside of school. Download the videos, songs, including performance tracks and song lyrics, and activity bundles with worksheets for your children.
Ocarina Workshop
Adventurous music-making resources support individual and group learning, so pupils (and parents/teachers) can enjoy making music at home or at school.
The Ocarina Workshop website has six teaching videos to play along with, start here:
For every ocarina ordered through the Ocarina Workshop website, they are giving a FREE ‘Play Your Ocarina’ Book 1! Order here.
Beat Goes On
Live ‘Body Beat’s body percussion sessions, delivered daily at 11am on YouTube by Ollie Tunmer, former STOMP cast member and qualified teacher.
You can also download free body percussion and samba rhythm resources from the Beat Goes On website.
Out of the Ark
Get singing and moving with these free resources! To help with the rhythms and routines of your new daily life, Out of the Ark Music has released seven songs, one for each day, all with challenges and activities related to each song. More songs and resources will be released every week for the next few weeks.
Royal Opera House
- Create and Sing programme: a creative learning programme, created with teachers, for primary schools across England. Features classroom-based and digital activities, with strong curriculum links, to give children a better understanding of singing and opera, unlocking their imagination and creativity. Includes teacher training, classroom films, lesson plans and resources to use in ways that suit the needs of the teachers and their students. Teachers do not need any previous knowledge of opera in order to take part.
- Create and Learn programme: Create and Learn invites you to explore the magical world of the theatre from home. All of the new resources are free to access and do not require you to login. Featuring new activities weekly, to get you singing, dancing and making.
Opera North
- Carnival of the Animals Films: based on music by French composer Camille Saint-Saëns, these 6 short films follow each movement of The Carnival of the Animals. Join our adventurers on their travel through beautiful natural landscapes around the world to meet lions, birds and elephants. Enter the magical world of the concert hall where all the different animals have joined players from the orchestra and take part in interactive games.
- Opera North Little School of Music: Little School of Music offers a series of interactive, pick-and-mix activities designed to encourage children and families to explore the world of music together.
The Voices Foundation Virtual Singing Assembly
Join the Voices Foundation’s Virtual Singing Assembly, live every weekday at 1pm for a a fun and uplifting 10-minute sing for children, parents and teachers!
Music Theory
Explore free online music theory lessons and exercises, from the basics to more complex piece analysis.
Chrome Music Lab
Chrome Music Lab makes learning music more accessible through fun, hands-on experiments. Explore the free tools to create, make and compose.
Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra
Carnegie Hall Listening Adventures presents Benjamin Britten’s Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra, complete with an interactive game.
Classics for Kids
- Composers: Find out all about the composers featured on Classics for Kids
- Games: Explore fun and interactive classical music games
The Chapel Hill Duo
Watch the Chapel Hill Duo demonstrating the violin and the cello, and the different styles of music that can be played on stringed instruments, in this interactive video.
Philharmonia
Explore orchestral sounds as the Philharmonia’s expert players guide you through the intricacies of the instruments they play.
Friday Afternoons
Friday Afternoons is a Snape Maltings led singing project connecting teachers and young people with contemporary composers, through creating high quality repertoire, resources and training to encourage challenging and exciting music making experiences for all. The catalogue provides warm ups, leader tutorials, case studies, lesson plans and worksheets to support teaching the repertoire.
National Teachers’ Choir
‘I’m Gonna Shine’ is a simple, 2-part song that has lovely actions to help convey the words. This song is free to access – you can stream or download various tracks, along with sheet music and lyrics, and a video clip showing optional Makaton signs.
Why not try out the harmonies at home and film yourselves singing this song together and share with the world?
London Philharmonic Orchestra
- Creative Classrooms Connect
- Let’s Sing Part 1 and Part 2 – an encyclopedia of every singing warm up, fun song and exercise you could ever need!
- Summer Songwriting – a project for a KS2 class to compose their own song together
Royal Opera House – Hansel and Gretel Immersive
Royal Opera House invites you to join CITV presenter Luke Franks as he visits the Royal Opera House and meets a host of young singers who introduce him to the opera Hansel and Gretel. This ten-lesson immersive course will guide children through the process of putting on your own version of this opera (which includes specially arranged musical extracts), and help you establish the key elements of dramatic singing.
City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra
The CBSO’s Education programme creates teachers packs and learning resources to accompany projects, providing teachers with creative ideas, practical music making activities, cross curricular learning opportunities and further listening suggestions. KS2 children can celebrate 100 years of Debussy’s music by engaging with the included material, in particular ‘Children’s Corner’.
University of Huddersfield: Music Archeology
From Stone Age to Roman Times | KS2 Education Pack
This education pack, with links to National Curriculum Programmes of Study for Music, History, Science, English, Art, Drama & DT, is a brilliant way for children to explore the sounds and music of pre-historical and early Roman sites.
The Lost Words: Spell Songs
The Lost Words: Spell Songs brings together eight remarkable musicians, whose music already engages deeply with landscape and nature, to respond to the creatures, art and language of The Lost Words. Spell Songs allowed these acclaimed and diverse musicians to weave together elements of British folk music, Senegalese folk traditions, experimental and classical music, and create an inspiring new body of work.
The free interdisciplinary school Explorers Pack for KS2-KS3 provides a wide range of suggestions to embrace a cross-curricular approach, encouraging constructive curiosity and suggesting a variety of ways of communicating and responding creatively, using a wide range of skills. Suggestions are made for individual and collaborative work, with the opportunity for some activities to involve the wider community.
Ex Cathedra – Singing Playgrounds
Ex Cathedra have shared a few of their favourite SingMaker songs via their new SingMaker YouTube platform. Each Monday this summer term a new song, presented by Ex Cathedra’s SingMaker team as an interactive film, will be released . These are aimed at up to 11 year olds and free to access. There will be brief notes associated with each song to maximise learning and enjoyment of participation.
The Voices Foundation
The Voices Foundation is a national charity which uses the power of singing to improve the lives of children and young people aged 0-18 in the UK. They have set up a daily ‘Virtual Singing Assembly’, which is taking place on weekdays at 13:00 on their YouTube channel.
Create React
Making music with the curious maths of aperiodic order.
Composer Liam Taylor-West has created a series of videos looking mathematics of aperiodic order, using musical examples. Students will investigate both mathematical and musical concepts through videos structured to form the basis for an hour-length “maths and music” lesson that works as part of a cross-curriculum primary school activity in Years 4 to 6.
Music Industry How To
How To Improve Timekeeping And Rhythmic Feel On Any Instrument.