Music of the World Camp Curriculum

The goal of the “Music of the World” camp is to increase the students’ awareness of and appreciation for cultures that are different from their own – through experiencing the music and studying the instruments of other countries.  Students will have a blast hearing the music from other cultures and learning about each counties’ musical instruments, landmarks, and animals.

This camp is appropriate for private students of any playing level (ages 5-12 will enjoy this camp the most) as well as for new students with little or no music background.  This camp is designed to be a 4-day camp that meets 2 hours each day; however, you can easily find ways to expand on this curriculum if you would like to use it over other periods of time.

Each day of camp, students will travel to a different country around the world — and they will collect stamps in their passports to prove it!

• Day 1: Australia – Students will learn about the Aboriginal people and a few of their musical instruments.  They will also make their own didgeridoo, which is one of the oldest instruments in the world!
• Day 2: China – Students will learn about ancient Chinese culture and make their own gong.
• Day 3: Ghana – Students will learn about the drum ensembles that are popular throughout West Africa and make their own drum.
• Day 4: Peru – Students will learn about the Andean people and make their own panpipes.

What is included in this curriculum:­

• Teacher lesson plans, which includes instructions for making 4 different world instruments.
• A PowerPoint presentation for each country, highlighting important facts and history as well as providing photos of instruments, animals, and landmarks.  The PowerPoint presentation can be shown from your lapbook computer.  Alternatively, a PDF version of the slides that can be used on the iPad (or other tablet) is available to purchasers for free upon request by email.
• A PDF for printing and assembling a passport for each student.
• A PDF of authentic-looking passport “stamps.”  At the beginning and end of each day of camp, give each student an entry or exit “stamp” that they can glue inside their passport.
• A PDF of the lapbook materials, which should be printed for each student.  As students watch the PowerPoint slides and listen to the teacher discuss the country and play recordings of music examples, they can work on cutting out and assembling their lapbooks.
• A link to a YouTube playlist of music that you can use throughout camp.

The only other necessary items you will need to purchase for this camp include file folders, scissors, crayons, lots of gluesticks, printer ink (black-and-white is adequate), paper, and the materials to make the instruments.

Purchase of the Music of the World camp includes the Terms of Use to print from the curriculum as much as desired for years to come, as long as the purchaser is using the materials with his/her own students.  (Please do not distribute the files to others in any other way.)

You can read more about when I held this camp with my students here.

Instructions:  After purchase, you will receive an email with links to download the compressed “zip” file.  Be patient as the file downloads, because it is a very large file.  Your computer will likely put the file into a folder called “Downloads,” but you will want to save the file to another location on your computer’s hard drive where you can easily find it again — so you can print from it for years to come.  When you double click the “zip” file, it will unarchive into a folder containing all of the camp files.  If you have any trouble downloading the file, please contact me and I will find a way to get the file to you!

Questions?  Read the Terms of Use here.