Planets and Feelings

I knew that my sixth grade class was studying about planets and outer space in their science lessons. I wanted to remember with them the music elements and talk about some planets.
I used a slideshow about Mercury, Neptune and Jupiter and we talked a little about each planet and I shared some facts.
I then had them listen to the song about Jupiter from Holst's The Planets. We discussed what musical elements they heard and connected the song to the planet and how he chose to represent Jupiter through music. The students had lots of good ideas about how Jupiter is a large planet and so he made the song loud. After we discussed the rhythym and a few other elements.
 I had them listen to another song which was the song about Mercury and we discussed the elements. They commented that it was a smaller planet and the music was softer and had a fast tempo to reflect that. With the things that we talked about for the second song, I drew on the board how it made me feel and how I could represent the way the music sounded.

Each of them got a piece of paper and some markers and as they listened to the last song about Neptune, I had them draw the way that the music sounded. I really liked that I was able to do that with them because it helped them make connections. They noticed that there were high and low sounds in the song that could mimick waves and they thought of the ocean because of the Roman god Neptune. They were able to look at their papers and see the same thing. They commented on how the song sounded more mysterious and maybe even depressing. One student said that made her feel like she was under water and it was dark and lonely.
This spurred a great conversation about feelings and how composers intentionally make us feel certain ways or use themes in their music. I mentioned movies and how the music sounds at a scary part, or happy part. We discussed how important music is in movies and how it helps convey a meaning to us through our feelings.