Bird and Diz written by Gary Goglio, illustrated by Ed Young Opening framework: Jazz is a type of music that is often improvisational. It is energetic, slow, or a lot of different things. Talked a little about the history of jazz and some famous jazz musicians. Artists to inspire: playing Salt Peanuts while reading. Hung up Matisse's Jazz series, and had a few other jazz-inspired art pieces printed out. Activity: Jazz art - Draw with construction paper crayons while listening to jazz music on long strips of construction paper (like the book), inspired by the music. Encouraged them to draw what they heard - maybe use different colors for different instruments.
The kids loved the long paper, which mimicked the book structure, and some of them got into drawing what they heard but others just ran wild with the big format. Either way, I felt it was successful. One young person said "My hand can't stop drawing!"
