Have you ever experimented with painting to music with your little ones?
We were lucky enough to receive a review copy of Bear Moves by Ben Bailey Smith and Sav Akyuz from the kind folks at Walker Books.

READ: A book that explores music
CREATE:A musical painting

Bear tears up the dance floor with his repertoire of dance moves.
He can foxtrot. Quickstep. Hula. Belly dance.

This is such a rollicking good read, and Bear would give John Travolta a run for his Saturday Night Fever money.
As soon as I flipped through it, I knew that we would extend our reading of the book through musical painting.

What we used when painting to music:

A watercolour palette
Watercolour paper
You could substitute the above with whatever materials you have on hand-
markers, crayons, newspaper, butchers paper
A Spotify playlist containing songs from the different musical genres in Bear Moves. E.g- quickstep, foxtrot, hula

Tips for painting to music with kids:

Have your materials organised and set up.

Our playlist was organised in the order of the musical genres explored in Bear Moves. So we flipped through the book as the songs changed.

You can see my kids in action with this activity over on Instagram.

I encouraged my children to use a different colour of paint for each musical genre.

As the music changed, I asked questions like “What kinds of marks does this music make you want to paint?” “How does this music make you feel?” “What colour suits this style of music?”

“This makes me want to paint zig zags!”
– Mr 3

My number 1 tip would be to complete this activity alongside your children- because it is THAT fun.

If you love the idea behind this project, why not go large scale? Check out Cara and Kinley’s Musical Canvas Experiment!

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