Australia -- Music and Culture

 In our music class we are covering music from different places around the world.  Easiest for me was starting with some music from Australia!  I talked more about this in another post below.  One of the outside activities everyone did this past week was to make their own dot painting.

The picture on the left is a dot painting that we bought in central Australia about 10 years ago.  It was useful in giving the kids examples of some of the aboriginal symbols (such as the U shape with a line -- representing man), the star shape with white blobs (which is a bush with witchetty grubs inside, the stream on waterhole (looks like a target), etc.  If you google aboriginal symbols, you'll find better examples (and images) than I can explain with words.

Anyway, the kids spent a couple of hours making their own dot paintings and decorating rhythm sticks.  They shared it during the 'show and tell' portion of class.  Everyone had a great time again -- especially with the active music games (1 and 20, London Bridge, In the Woods, a musical version of "duck, duck goose and more!)

DD's dot painting

LD's rhythm stick including various aboriginal symbols.

Here are a few other Australia-related resources we used if you're doing a unit on Australia.
 
Australian animal flashcards (includes wombat, emu, platypus, kookaburra and more)

Australian flag printables 

Children Around the World: Australia

Next week we're off to Japan for more music and culture there!