School-Age: Duke Ellington and the Piano

This week we learned a bit about Duke Ellington as well as some trivia about pianos!


Reading:
We read the book "88 Instruments" by Chris Barton. A child is trying to decide on what instrument he wants to learn how to play and there are SO many to choose from! In the end he settles on the piano!

Discussion:
I gave the kids a brief overview of Duke Ellington's life and showed some pictures of him playing in Harlem's Cotton Club.

Then I played a game of piano trivia with the kids. We learned about the most expensive piano in the world, the largest piano, when the piano was invented, and more!


Craft:
I found a picture on Pinterest of a thumb piano but no information about how to make it. SO, I used the picture as inspiration and came up with the materials on my own.

I used wooden 4"X4" wooden banners that I found on Oriental Trading. I couldn't find anything smaller than that (at least that was inexpensive enough to justify buying enough for my program).

I also used bobby pins as the 'keys' of the piano and purchased electrical tape to hold the 'keys' to the wooden banner.

I painted one side of the wooden banners prior to the program. 

During the craft the kids got to decorate their thumb pianos however they liked!

Notes:
At the earlier program of the week we had the kids/parents help us attach their 'keys' to their own thumb piano. Since we only had a handful of kids, that worked just fine. However, I had a TON of kids signed up for my Friday program. I had my teen helpers help me tape bobby pins down on as many banners as we could before the Friday program so we had that step already completed.