A Jazzy Day - Music Education
By Patricia Monticello Kievlan,
Common Sense Media Reviewer
Common Sense Media Reviewers
Jazz it up and explore instruments working together.
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A Jazzy Day - Music Education
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What’s It About?
In A JAZZY DAY - MUSIC EDUCATION, kids can read an interactive storybook that follows two kittens as they spend the day with a big band orchestra. The story explores the instruments in jazz bands and how they work together to create a distinctive sound. Within the story, kids can tap musicians and instruments to move them and hear them play. Elsewhere in the app, kids can tap pictures of various big band instruments to hear how they sound, and a brief game invites kids to identify instruments that they see and hear.
Is It Any Good?
Part game and part storybook, this guided tour of jazz instruments is an engrossing, whimsical way to introduce kids to the instruments commonly used in jazz and the way they work together. The descriptions of each section of the band are especially well done: This is a music appreciation app that can help kids learn to listen critically not only for the sounds of the instruments, but also for how musicians work together. It's nice that kids can read the story on their own or hear it read aloud, and the app feels flexible and replayable, since kids can see and hear the instruments within the story, in the sandbox-style Learn section, or within the game. It would be even better if there were more opportunities for kids to hear how the instruments can work together, perhaps by letting kids hear multiple instruments at once rather than only one at a time. As it is, this is an approachable and amusing way to foster music appreciation in the youngest budding musicians.
Talk to Your Kids About ...
Families can talk about what kind of music they enjoy in A Jazzy Day - Music Education and offscreen. Which instruments are their favorites? What do they like about those instruments? If they could play an instrument, what would they like to play? Why?
Help kids start to become critical listeners: As you listen to music together, ask what instruments your kids hear. What instruments do they hear in different songs? How do the instruments they hear set the mood for a song? How do they help tell a story?
App Details
- Devices: iPhone , iPod Touch , iPad
- Subjects: Arts : music
- Pricing structure: Paid
- Release date: September 13, 2018
- Category: Education
- Topics: Arts and Dance , Music and Sing-Along
- Publisher: The Melody Book
- Version: 3.0
- Minimum software requirements: iOS 7.0 or later
- Last updated: November 3, 2021
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