Thunderstorm Score — Draw It, Then Play It

The child composes a short piece of weather music on kitchen instruments, draws it as a row of pictures, and then plays it back from their own “score.”

  1. Gather three or four sound-makers: a pot and wooden spoon (drum), a jar of rice (shaker), two spoons to click, a pan lid to ring. Explore each one — how can it play softly? Loudly? Fast? Slowly?
  2. Choose a storm story: gentle rain, heavier rain, thunder, rain fading away, sun. Decide together which instrument and which kind of playing fits each part.
  3. Lay a long strip of paper (or four sheets in a row). The child draws a sign for each part, left to right: tiny dots for soft rain, big dots for heavy rain, zigzags for thunder, a blank gap for silence.
  4. Slide a finger slowly along the strip while the child plays what the finger is pointing to.
  5. Play it again. Is it the same piece? Would they change anything — more thunder, a longer silence?
  6. Swap. You play from their score while they point and conduct.

Variation: cut the score into cards and rearrange them to make a new piece, or compose a different story — a train leaving a station, a cat creeping up on a bird, a rocket launch.

Requirements

  • Space: A table or a patch of floor
  • Surface: Table or floor; a tea towel under metal instruments softens the sound and stops them sliding
  • Materials: 3–4 household sound-makers (pot and wooden spoon, jar of rice with a tight lid, two spoons, pan lid), a strip of paper, crayons
  • Participants: 1 adult + 1 child; siblings can take an instrument each
  • Supervision: Moderate — adult sets up and helps the child plan and read back the score

Rationale & Objective

This is where “plays simple percussion instruments” meets the three musical contrasts: to make rain different from thunder the child has to choose and control loud/soft and fast/slow on purpose, and to play with silence. Composing with a few sounds to tell a story is the heart of the Orff Schulwerk approach and of the Singapore NEL expectation that children create music or sound effects with voices, body percussion, and percussion instruments in response to a story or other stimulus, and Development Matters asks that children “play instruments with increasing control to express their feelings and ideas.” Drawing the piece adds something important. Research on children’s invented notations (Bamberger; Barrett; Davidson & Scripp) shows that when young children draw their music they reveal — and sharpen — what they understand about how it is organized, and they begin to grasp that marks on paper can stand for sounds in time, read from left to right. In Reggio Emilia terms, the child is moving one idea between two of their “hundred languages.”

Progress Indicators

  • Early: plays every instrument the same way — loud and fast; the drawing is a picture of a storm, not a plan for sounds; plays without following the finger
  • Developing: makes clear loud/soft and fast/slow differences when reminded; draws different marks for different sounds; follows the pointing finger for part of the score
  • Proficient: plans which sound goes with which part; plays the whole score in order, changing instrument and dynamics at the right places; observes the silence; can repeat the piece much the same way
  • Advanced: invents own symbols and explains them; revises the piece (“more quiet at the end”); reads a score drawn by someone else; layers two players or composes a new story unprompted

Safety Notes

  • Metal on metal is very loud close to small ears — use a wooden spoon, put a tea towel under lids, and agree that loud is strong, not as hard as possible
  • Tape or screw shaker lids on firmly; rice, beans, and beads are choking hazards for younger siblings
  • Check instruments for sharp edges, and do not use glass as a drum
  • Agree on a stop signal (hands on head) before starting; excited children on drums find stopping hard
  • Children who are sensitive to noise can use softer sound-makers — a cardboard box drum, a shaker of cotton buds, scrunched paper

Hints

  • Playfulness: perform the finished storm for the family with the lights dimmed for thunder, and give the piece a title and a composer’s name on the score
  • Sustain interest: keep the scores in a folder as a “composition book” and play old ones again; make a new story each time (jungle, building site, bedtime)
  • Common mistake: the adult designing the piece. Offer the storm idea and then follow — odd choices (thunder on a rice shaker) are the child’s composition, not errors
  • Limited space: with no instruments use body sounds — finger taps for drizzle, knee pats for rain, stamps for thunder — and draw the score just the same
  • Cross-domain: left-to-right symbol reading is a pre-literacy skill; sequencing beginning, middle, and end supports storytelling; talk about real weather and where thunder comes from (science)
  • Progression: explore the sounds freely → play a storm with adult narration → draw 3–4 symbols and play them in order → add silence and get-louder signs → rearrange the cards → two players reading one score

Sources

  • Singapore MOE Nurturing Early Learners Framework — Aesthetics and Creative Expression (create music or sound effects with vocal sounds, body percussion and percussion instruments in response to a stimulus)
  • Development Matters (Department for Education, England) — “Play instruments with increasing control to express their feelings and ideas”
  • Barrett, M.S. (1997), “Invented notations: A view of young children’s musical thinking,” Research Studies in Music Education
  • Bamberger, J. (1991), The Mind Behind the Musical Ear: How Children Develop Musical Intelligence (Harvard University Press)
  • Davidson, L. & Scripp, L. (1988), “Young children’s musical representations: Windows on music cognition,” in Sloboda (ed.), Generative Processes in Music
  • Orff Schulwerk — elemental music-making: sound stories with speech, body percussion, and untuned percussion
  • Reggio Emilia — the hundred languages of children (moving ideas between expressive media)