Night Music is a beautiful, lyrical story that takes readers on a journey into the secret life of animals at night. Full of sounds, songs, and symphonies, this stunningly illustrated picture book is a gentle invitation to listen, imagine, and dream. The perfect bedtime read for little nature lovers.
How to Use ‘Night Music’ and these Teaching Notes:
All children’s literature should, first and foremost, be read for enjoyment. We should be encouraging our students to listen, engage and imagine when we read aloud. Not every story we share needs to be analysed or studied. For this reason, we don’t include comprehension-style discussion questions in our teaching notes. However, some texts lend themselves beautifully as a springboard into an array of curriculum areas and activities, allowing children to still enjoy the story as it is, but also use it as inspiration to investigate and explore.
Pitched at children aged 5–8 years, Night Music can of course be enjoyed by all ages. While these teaching notes are designed to cater for students in Foundation (Kindergarten) to Year 3, according to the Australian Curriculum, there is nothing to stop teachers of older children from expanding on these ideas and linking them to curriculum outcomes.
The teaching notes for Night Music are divided into topics inspired by the story. Each topic covers a number of curriculum areas in Foundation, Year 1, Year 2 and Year 3 as follows:
- When words make noise
- English, maths, music
- The secret lives of night animals
- English, science, digital technologies, visual art
- Who conducts the crickets?
- Music, technologies, visual arts, English
- Listening like a scientist
- Science
Teachers may select individual activities, or a combination of activities to form a unit of work stemmed from Night Music.
Ultimately, the objective is to have fun – with a little learning on the side.