November 1st = an extra hour in bed and a house full of candy here in Calgary. 🙂

If your little spooks haven’t already devoured their Halloween stash, here are some candy-themed musical activities to try…

Music Notation

Draw an extra-large sheet of manuscript paper and use Rockets, M&Ms or any small candies to make musical notes.

For beginners you can simply practice placing notes on lines and spaces. You can also compose your own short pieces or play a dictation game with one person singing a melodic pattern for the other to arrange on the staff.

Feel free to grab my printable from the bottom of this post to try this at home.

Hand position (for piano)

Rockets are a great shape for little hands to get used to the feeling of playing with the tips of fingers rather than the pads. Play around with tapping on the candies and pushing them around to try and get those fingers muscles working – you could try and select different colour candies for different finger numbers.

Making Patterns

Using any candies you could challenge your kids to continue sequences and complete patterns. Depending on the ages of your kids you can vary the complexity of the patterns and the position of the missing candies. If they are finding it too easy you can introduce mistakes
for them to fix (your choice whether they are allowed to eat the mistakes!)

This is such a useful activity for early maths skills, too.

Percussion!

I fondly remember the days when my daughter used to call Smarties ‘shakins’, because we cruelly let her believe that they were percussion toys rather than sweets. Smarties, Nerds, Milk Duds… anything that will rattle or roll around in a box can be used to shake along to the beat of the Monster Mash… Even any crisps/chips that got squashed at the bottom of the candy stash can join the rhythm section!

And if you got a can of pop along the way – there’s your drum right there. Make use of those lollies as beaters.

And for the non-candy Halloween treats…

…tune in tomorrow! In the meantime, here’s my candy-ready manuscript paper – I hope you’ll find it useful. candycompositions