Curriculum Materials Center

Primarily for use with children aged three to eight, SoundPlay will spark the creative imaginations of both teachers and children and provide children with developmentally appropriate challenges for using their skills in creative ways. Features include: 14 lessons designed to help young children learn to move their bodies in 20 different ways, 33 lessons involving children in the creative uses of movements they have learned to show recognition of the different aspects of music, a CD with 47 musical selections built around the lessons and composed especially to stimulate young children's interest in moving to musical sound, an index of aspects of music highlighted in the activities, and the complete MENC PreK Music Standards and K-4 National Standards for Music Education.

Alfred's Essentials of Music Theory is designed for students of any age, whether listeners or performers, who want to have a better understanding of the language of music.

This lively and imaginative book is being used in homes and schools in over 13 countries to help children learn about music and sound while they develop the ability to listen, concentrate, be creative, improvise, and trust one another.

Developed in conjunction with Thinking Musically and the culture case studies in the Global Music Series, Teaching Music Globally provides teachers and students of music education with ideas and techniques for engaging their students in the study of the world's musical cultures. Offering alarge selection of exercises and activities of varying difficulty, this text is a guide for teachers of elementary through university level students--in band, choir, general music, orchestra, and any other school music classes--who seek to establish a comprehensive musical understanding for students living in a global era.

A dazzling introduction to the world of art for children, the Oxford First Book of Art boasts a rich collection of images--paintings, drawings, sculptures, and textiles--from around the world and through the ages. Gillian Wolfe uses simple, vivid language to encourage young readers to examine the art and ask questions about its contents and origin. The pictures are grouped by themes, starting with more accessible subjects. Wolfe sprinkles numerous quizzes and games among the more serious themes to provide gentle, entertaining guidance to artistically-inclined children.

Discover 5 great Renaissance artists as you play 2 fun card games: Go Fish and a new version of Concentration. Collect 6 works of art by da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, Fra Angelico, and Botticelli as you play. Learn the story behind each painting in the 76-page full-color book that comes with the game.

75 great American masters are introduced through open-ended quality art activities allowing kids to explore great art styles from colonial times to the present. Each child-tested art activity presents a biography, full color artwork, and techniques covering painting, drawing, sculpture, photography, architecture, and more. Special art options for very young children are included.

An ideal way to start children on an exciting, creative adventure towards global understanding! The fun, easy-to-do art activities in Global Art use collage, painting, drawing, printing, construction and sculpture to help children appreciate people and cultures from all over the world. Each activity is explained in step-by-step detail an accompanied by geographic and cultural background to help you make the most of the teaching possibilities.

Chop-Monster Jr. is a teacher's handbook that clearly outlines how to teach jazz to elementary classroom music students. No prior jazz experience is necessary for teachers or students. Imaginative call-and-response activities, movement, and circle games teach young people how to sing and play JAZZ! Students will be able to groove to and play jazz "swing" beats; vocalize and play swing eighth-notes; communicate musically through call-and-response; scat-sing and improvise one-, two- and three-note phrases; independently perform kid-sized jazz works.

A compilation of methods, ideas, and suggestions for creating special places to encourage music making by young children. Developed by early childhood music experts over years of experience and research, the suggestions also offer ways to effectively explore the Prekindergarten Music Education Standards.

The GAMEPLAN Curriculum is an active music curriculum for children, organized chronologically (Sept-May) with 4 lessons per month, each with approximately 60 minutes of activities. The curriculum embraces several music philosophies, including the principles of Orff Schulwerk and the Kodály approach to reading rhythm and melody. Each grade level includes experiences in imitation, exploration, improvisation, and visualization; repertoire rich in folk literature, nursery rhymes and traditional singing games; a yearly plan categorizing objectives in 5 conceptual areas (rhythm, melody, harmony, form, timbre); written assessments. Many song arrangements use barred Orff instruments, percussion, and/or recorders.

A how-to book detailing the creation and implementation of an elementary general music curriculum for grades 3-5.

In 11 chapters that cover all aspects of the creative experience, the author relates art to everyday life in a lively text with many reproductions.

With more than 100 activities, this book provides an endless variety of art activities for the classroom. Chapters address how teachers can talk with children about their art, the stages in a child's artistic development, and how children can discuss ideas with peers. Focusing on the process of making art rather than on the product, More Than Painting is the guide for developing an art curriculum in your classroom.

Visual Arts as a Way of Knowing is a serious yet fun resource for teachers who are curious about art and know that it can be an important part of their teaching. The book is meant to tease out the artist in you, to encourage you to take risks and delve into painting or drawing or just making things.

When a book of unexplainable occurrences brings Petra and Calder together, strange things start to happen: Seemingly unrelated events connect; an eccentric old woman seeks their company; an invaluable Vermeer painting disappears. Before they know it, the two find themselves at the center of an international art scandal, where no one is spared from suspicion. As Petra and Calder are drawn clue by clue into a mysterious labyrinth, they must draw on their powers of intuition, their problem solving skills, and their knowledge of Vermeer. Can they decipher a crime that has stumped even the FBI?

Every Saturday, Pawcasso trots into town with a basket, a shopping list, and cash in paw to buy groceries for his family. One day, he passes eleven-year-old Jo, peering out the window of her house, bored and lonely. Astonished by the sight of an adorable basket-toting dog on his own, Jo follows Pawcasso, and when she's seen alongside him by a group of kids from her school, they mistake her for Pawcasso's owner. Excited to make new friends, Jo reluctantly hides the truth and agrees to let "her" dog model for an art class the kids attend. What could go wrong? But what starts as a Chihuahua-sized lie quickly grows Great Dane-sized when animal control receives complaints about a dog roaming the streets off-leash.

Lost and alone in a forbidden forest, Otto meets three mysterious sisters and suddenly finds himself entwined in a puzzling quest involving a prophecy, a promise, and a harmonica. Decades later, Friedrich in Germany, Mike in Pennsylvania, and Ivy in California each, in turn, become interwoven when the very same harmonica lands in their lives.

James Morgan has an almost unearthly gift for music. And it has attracted Nuala, a soul-snatching faerie muse who fosters and then feeds on the creative energies of exceptional humans until they die. James has plenty of reasons to fear the faeries, but as he and Nuala collaborate on an achingly beautiful musical composition, James finds his feelings towards Nuala deepening. But the rest of the fairies are not as harmless. As Halloween--the day of the dead--draws near, James will have to battle the Faerie Queen and the horned king of the dead to save Nuala's life and his soul.

Feeling pulled between two cultures after a month with family in Pakistan, Amina shares her experiences with Wisconsin classmates through a class assignment and a songwriting project with new student Nico.

Superb real-life photographs of instruments ranging from zithers and panpipes to electric guitars and synthesizers offer a unique "eyewitness" view of ancient and contemporary music. See how strings vibrate to make a note sound, how an invisible "column" of air sounds a pipe, which instrument resembles a peacock, how sousaphone players wear their instruments. Learn who invented an important new key system, how to master the bagpipes, why pipe organs have "ears" and "mouths", and why French horns are "doubled up". Discover how a vegetable gourd charms snakes, why tangled fingers led to the invention of the piano, why spiders add a "buzz" to xylophones, where reindeer toe-bones were used as whistles, and much, much more!

Discover the surprising beginnings and humble origins of the charismatic pioneers who helped shape the country-and-western scene into the influential musical empire it is today.

In the faces found in art (portraits, self-portraits, masks, etc.), readers discover how people from different cultures and times saw themselves.

Unlike many other forms, Folk Art doesn't have a single history in any one culture, era, or civilization. It belongs to all cultures, and represents the "non-trained artist" and his and her work. It is a creative endeavor by regular persons and craftsmen, who want to take ordinary useful objects and make them crafted and artful. This colorful survey introduces readers to the roots of folk art and its impact on everyday life. Decorating techniques, rituals, and celebrations are explored.

20th Century Art is a fascinating new series that offers an accessible key to the history of modern art and places that art in the context of contemporary political, economic, and social trends. Striking full-color reproductions of the masterpieces of each decade illustrate these clear and authoritative guides, which highlight the maze of revolutionary artists and styles and their social and political backgrounds.

A fascinating exploration of the healing power of art. Children and adults alike find comfort in making things, but never has the act of creating been so poignant as when it is done during times of duress, such as in concentration camps and prisons, during extreme drought and poverty, or while battling mental illness.

During World War I, British and American ships were painted with bold colors and crazy patterns from bow to stern. Why would anyone put such eye-catching designs on ships? Desperate to protect ships from German torpedo attacks, British lieutenant-commander Norman Wilkinson proposed what became known as dazzle. These stunning patterns and colors were meant to confuse the enemy about a ship's speed and direction. By the end of the war, more than four thousand ships had been painted with these mesmerizing designs.