Submitted by Roxanne Bowker, Littleton, New Hampshire
Idea posted October 23, 2002
I have developed a pretty good writing project which I do with 4th graders, but older kids could do it even better. The assignment is to write a detailed description of a musical instrument without giving away its name. Student reads it to class. Class may be divided into 2 teams. First team to guess correctly, gets a point.
Kids love the "Mystery Instrument" game and sometimes use the glossary in the back of their music book for ideas. There are some cool, unusual foreign instruments there. (Silver Burdett Music Connection). Later, I let kids draw the instrument and we put them on the wall. Kids can use yarn or string to connect the descriptions with the pictures, which are labeled.