The theme for Halloween this year at Children’s Resources Educational Center (serving students PreK3 – Grade 5) is Pirates.

I have to say, I’m a little excited about it. I love the soundtracks to the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, so ever since I heard the theme idea, my mind has been coming up with creative ways to use that music.

One of the ideas I came up with for the middle school students was a Pirate Creative Listening Experience.

Here’s how it went:

I explained that we were going to listen to a few different clips of pirate music. When the music started, they were to close their eyes and pretend there was a movie playing on the inside of their eyelids. I asked them to picture what they thought was happening in the music.

After listening to each clip, the students raised their hands and shared what they thought the music was depicting.

Here are the clips I used from the “Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End” soundtrack and some of the creative responses I heard:

Track 4 “Multiple Jacks” – One student said it sounded like a skeleton playing the piano

Track 5 “Up Is Down” – One student thought this sounded like the pirates had found treasure

Track 12 “One Day” – The students agreed this sounded like a ship sailing out to sea

Track 13 “Drink Up Me Hearties” – One student said this sounded like a sword fight and went into great detail about who was fighting and what the outcome was

The purpose of this musical experience was to give the students the opportunity to do some creative imagination and work on their expressive communication skills.

Now that I see how effective it is to incorporate recorded musical with elementary and middle school students, I’m already planning our next creative listening experience.