Pre-K draw pictures that play as music in Chrome Music Lab's Kandinsky

Pre-K (Early Years, age 3 to 5) · 20 min · 1 tablet per group of 3, with an adult

Reception are exploring how sounds can be long or short, high or low. In small groups with an adult, each child takes a turn on a tablet in Chrome Music Lab's Kandinsky, which needs no account, drawing lines and shapes and then pressing play to hear their picture turned into sound. Children notice that marks drawn high on the screen sound higher than marks drawn low, that changing colour changes the sound, and that circles turn into faces that sing, and the adult challenges them to change their picture so it sounds like rain, then like a giant stomping. Each child plays their final picture to the group and says what they changed.

Why this is Creative Amplify

Each child draws a picture of their own and turns it into a piece of sound, so they are making an original artefact. The task is the familiar graphic score, drawing marks that stand for sounds, and the tool adds to it: the picture plays back the moment it is drawn, so children can change a mark and hear the difference straight away.

Compared with

Drawing a graphic score of marks for rain or a giant and playing it on classroom percussion.

Watch out

Because the drawing plays itself, this can look like Transform, but graphic scores already turn drawings into sound; the change is instant playback, an addition to a task children already do.

Tools: Chrome Music Lab Nine ideas for your own version in Generate

This page is one of a growing set of PICRAT examples by cell, subject and grade. Page maintained by Andy Perryer.

Pre-K draw pictures that play as music in Chrome Music Lab's Kandinsky.

Nine ideas for your own version.

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Nine ideas for your own version.