Feather Theme

Last Saturday morning, I attended a workshop put on by the St. Louis chapter of AOSA (Orff-Schulwerk Association) All the teachers there were very nice and I learned so much about music education. The Orff-Schulwerk approach to music education is very focused on movement and having the children actively engaged in the music.
I was chompin' at the bit to teach the new lessons I learned at the workshop. I decided to teach a lesson on dynamics in music using  "The Feather Theme" song from Forrest Gump. I found a fabric outlet store and purchased 5 yards of different colors of chiffon and cut them into small scarves. The key concepts of the lesson were Listening and Movement. I told the students to imagine that the scarves were feathers floating in the wind. The music from the song is divided into three sections. We started out kneeling on the floor in a circle making the scarves float along the ground. Section 2 the students stood up and began to walk slowly around the room floating the scarves at the medium level (about waist high) The third section the students billowed the scarves up above their heads when the music crescendoed. All the classes loved it. I could tell they were listening carefully for the musical cues to switch levels. It looked really cool too, all the different colors and the children spinning around to the music with huge smiles on their faces. This is one of the reasons why I do what I do.