BP5_Carnegie Hall's Listening Adventures

Carnegie Hall’s Listening Adventures

A Young Persons Guide to the Orchestra

This is an online game that I found that I foresee being one of the greatest tools I could use in my classroom.. It is an interactive safari through the land of orchestra instruments. You first meet you tour guide Viola and her Uncle Ollie. They talk about the different instrument families and the instruments that belong in each family. Then the first games appears. It is a game to unlock the garage where the safari truck is kept! To gain access to the truck, you have to successfully group the four instrument families based on their members.

From here is where the greatest adventures begin! You travel with the young girl Viola through what resembles Central Africa. You first come upon Woodwind pond, where each instrument in the woodwind family have their own lesson, interactive book of information, sound samples and then the game. There is no two games alike in this adventure. Once the woodwind pond is completed,  you travel to string savannah and have the same format for each instrument. The third leg of the safari is the brasslands then finally into percussion jungle. Once the whole safari is complete, which took quite a bit of time, you come to the ancient concert stage and all the instruments jump out and run to the stage to perform a concert for you, Viola and the animals you had met along the way.

It is very hard to teach K-2 students about the different instruments. It becomes frustrating to remember the subtle differences between different instruments. I find this game to be a wonderful tool to teach about each instrument. With each game being so different and meaningful to that particular instrument, students will better remember the information.

I think so far in my search for tools with the same objective, this is by far the most extraordinary. Children of all ages will love to travel through each land and interact with each instrument. I cannot wait to use this in my classroom. Children would call this site a game, but for me, I call it a genius tool that makes every music teacher’s job a little bit easier.