Animusic! Create Your Own Instrument Project

For the past week, the 2nd graders have been working on a project called Animusic! Animusic is an American company that specializes in the 3D visualization of MIDI-based music. To start, we talked about how the word Animusic combines 2 words, animation and music. We talked about how we see animation in the movies we watch and the video games we play, and how animators use science and math, along with their imaginations to create amazing visualizations. We watched a variety of animusic videos, and after each video we answered 4 questions....1. What is it called? 2. What is it made out of? 3. How is it played? 4. How does it sound? After getting some inspiration, students either decided to work on their own or with a partner to create their own instrument. With the only limit being what they could dream up in their imaginations, the students drew their instruments and then had to add a written description answering those 4 questions. It was fun to see the creative instruments students created and I loved watching them collaborate with one another to create something new. Like I told the students in class, engineers are people who solve problems and use their creativity to dream and create new things. Many of the skills that students develop through music are ones that directly correlate to professions in math and science. Perseverance, creativity, collaboration, teamwork, attention to detail, self-reflection, recognizing patterns (or lack there of), sequencing and so many more are all things that students practice daily in music class, and it is so fun to see those skills come into life for this project. I can't wait to see their finished instruments--keep up the good work, 2nd graders!