The composer takes a piece of paper and an instrument and "writes" music by drawing 5 lines, and adding notes to the lines and spaces. We wrote our own music, and colored notes on a separate sheet which we then played on a xylophone to hear our creations.
We also learned about a famous composer, Chopin (pronounced "sho-pan") who was a composer of piano music. We played our pretend pianos to Chopin's "Minute Waltz", and looked at real music to see what the lines and notes look like.
The conductor takes a piece of music and leads musicians in playing it. We each took turns being the conductor (the rest of us played the handbells). The musicians had to watch for the conductor to start and stop the music, and to know when to play fast or slow, loud or soft. We ended with a big round of applause for everyone!
