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Using GarageBand with Children's Books

Album Description

For this project, students were taught how to create music in GarageBand and then were asked to create music to accompany a page from the children's book, The Rocket Book, which was written in 1912. This activity served two purposes. 

First, students were able to make observations about the Rocket Book, which tells the story of a rocket in the basement that is found and lit by a kid. The rocket then flies up through each floor in the apartment building where students can see different activities such as people playing ragtime on the piano or listening to a record on the Victrola. As my students are also studying jazz, and other teachers are touching upon this time period in history at my school, this activity helped to shed light on the early 20th century.

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Second, creating music to a page in this book gave students the opportunity to think about how to create music to a particular situation or activity taking place in the book. After students created music to go along with a page in the book, students shared their project with others in the class.

Below is an example of music created by a 6th grader at my school, The Independent Day School, in Middlefield CT, for this project. My 6th grader chose the page where ragtime music was being played on the piano. You can hear a piano playing and partway through you can hear what sounds like the rocket going up through the floor of the apartment.  ragtime   Art/Music   Social Studies/History   Technology   jazz 

GarageBand music mp3 created by my student for the 7th flat in The Rocket Book

Teaching Notes

Using GarageBand, ask students to create music to a page from the Rocket Book, matching the action on the page of the book chosen.

  GarageBand    music    Social Studies/History    Art/Music    6 - 8    3 - 5  

The Rocket Book, 7th Flat

Teaching Notes

1. Choose a page from The Rocket Book and have students analyze the pages as a group.

2. Read the story together, stopping after each page for observations and reflections

3. At the end, ask students what questions they had from reading the book.

4. Ask the students to each choose a page and use GarageBand to create music for each page.

5. Share with the class.