Submitted by Patty O., Arkansas

Idea posted October 26, 2004

On the suggestion of someone from the mailing list, I made a musical scavenger hunt in my room. We have a new school, so everything here is unknown to parents, and we were expected to have open doors! I offered a prize for any student completing the musical scavenger hunt. At first I thought it would flop, but I think at one point I had over 100 people in my room, going from station to station.

  • Station One - introduce yourself to me.
  • Station Two - improvise a melody on the bass xylophones (I had three out).
  • Station Three - play a posted rhythm on a hand drum.
  • Station Four - unscramble the word of an instrument with the help of the instrument posters.
  • Station Five - measure the difference between the alto and soprano recorder.
  • Station Six - count the number black keys on the piano and play them.
  • Station Seven - play the percussion frogs and tell which one had the highest pitch.
  • Station Eight - listen to the song on the PowerPoint running ("What A Wonderful World") and write the name of the singer.

Zoo doesn't even begin to describe it! One parent said my room was a "cheerful chaos." It was an excellent way to introduce parents/students to my room, but at one point I had to hold myself back from running out the door! I had about 400 parents visit and about 200 kids fill out the scavenger hunt. This looked great on paper because we were to document parent contact - but two hours of this was a CHALLENGE!