Music of the spheres
Target Audience: Children grades K-5
Timeline Options: 3-day, 10-week, semester-long, year-long
Skills and Objectives: Build sound awareness and encourage children’s own creativity; improve mental health outcomes for children; improve literacy outcomes; deepen and enhance existing in-school partnerships between cultural organizations and local schools.
Creative Product: Each child will create their own “music of the spheres” – the music they believe would bring peace on earth – with the help of a teaching artist using small instruments, found objects, and their own voices.
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Music of the spheres is a music-based interdisciplinary curriculum that uses Ted Hughes’ novella, The Iron Giant, as a core text. Throughout this curriculum, which can be adapted for any academic classroom, students explore musical composition, sound awareness, and their own creativity to compose their own music of the spheres.
The Iron Giant by Ted Hughes tells the story of a giant metal-made man who crash lands on earth and is discovered by a young boy, Hogarth. When the iron giant begins devouring scrap metal and destroying the town, the residents seek to get rid of him, but Hogarth convinces the town to accept the Iron Giant. When an alien dragon from outer space threatens the planet, the Iron Giant, in an attempt to protect the humans, discovers that the dragon is a peaceful “star spirit” who sings “the music of the spheres.”
