Kindergarten: literacy, coding & music, Oh My!

Working with kindergarten students I am always looking for ways to connect books and literacy with technology and maker skills. I want students to dive deeper into the books that we are reading and also connect this with deeper creation and technology skills that we can build on as they move up in grades. For the past few weeks my kindergarten students worked on a project that connected the book Goldi Rocks and the Three Bears by Corey Rosen Schwartz with music and coding.

We started this project by reading the book Goldi Rocks and the Three Bears. The book is a very funny retelling of the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Students then talked about the important events that happened at the beginning, middle and end of the story and who were the main characters in the book. We also talked about what was the same and what was different about the Goldi Rocks version of the book and the original version of the story. Next I introduced the project to the students. I told them we would be planning and creating a dramatic musical retelling of the story. Students were assigned to a musical instrument that was in the book: guitar, piano, drums and cymbals. I shared with students that we would be building a computer to make our musical instruments. They were all excited to see how this was going to happen!

I shared with students the Makey Makey. This is an innovation kit that allows you to make your own keyboard that can then connect to everyday objects and your computer to create an interactive keyboard. The first step was to have the students create the sound and connect it to coding on the Scratch code website. We had spent sometime this winter sharing coding apps and robots with students so they were familiar with the idea of creating coding that instructs the robot on what to do. I showed students the Scratch program and each was able to record their musical instrument sound. Each sound connected to a key on the keyboard, in turn that key corresponded to a key on the Makey Makey board.

The next step was to connect the code and the fruit to the Makey Makey for each instrument. We used different fruits for our instruments. Students learned how the fruit connects to the Makey Makey board with an alligator clip, then the board is connected to them as well as through the earth key to connect the circuit. Each piece of fruit connected to an instruction that the students had created in the Scratch code they created for each of their sounds.

The final step was the dramatic musical retelling of Goldi Rocks and the Three Bears. Students “played” their instruments when it was mentioned in the story and there was a huge jam session at the end for the worldwide tour of the band Goldi Rocks and the Three Bears!

Students had a great time with this project. Each week kindergarteners retold the story of Goldi Rocks, recalling important elements of the story and focusing on the sequence of the book, an important early literacy skill. Students also made connections with what they had learned about how coding works and created their own code and connected it to the keyboard to create an interactive computer keyboard. This will allow us to continue to build on these early technology and coding skills as the students advance in grades to more complex computing skills. As a great bonus it was so much fun! The students had a great time finding music and making interactive musical fruit!