Yesterday, as part of my series Stories in tune, I rounded up the various picture book versions of The Magic Flute we’ve recently been enjoying. Today I’ll describe the play all these books and music inspired in us…
In between reading the different versions of The Magic Flute lots of playing involving dressing up ensued where we were either serpents or princesses (if you are unfamiliar with the story of The Magic Flute there is a detailed synopsis here from Glyndebourne Opera ). We also considered trying to make our own flutes – the ones on Vegetableinstruments.com looked like a lot of fun! But eventually, inspired by this post from Silly Eagle Books and this project at enchantedlearning.com, we then set about playing “Papageno” and catching our own birds.
1. I cut out some small bird templates which M and J decorated and added eyes to.
2. M folded coloured paper concertina style, cut it to about 10cm long and then inserted it into a slot I had cut in the birds’ tummies to create wings.
3. M and I made cages for the birds. Each cage required 9 long pipecleaners. First we took 5 pipecleaners and laid them like a star, just over lapping in the centre by a centimetre or two.
4. We folded over the ends of the pipecleaners to attach them to each other, creating a “knot”. We bent up the pipecleaners about 5 cm away from the “knot”.
5. We twisted the loose ends of all 5 pipecleaners together tightly and then gently pulled the pipecleaners to create a bit of a bell shape.
6. We used the remaining pipecleaners to weave around the bell creating a cage.
7. We hung up the birds in their cages with some thread and tied some ribbon on to each cage so we could hang them up – in our crab apple tree. M and J then found their wings from when we played Flyaway Katie and pretended to be Papageno. We all had a great deal of fun!
Here are selection of links to items about The Magic Flute if you want to play or learn some more with your kids:
I can honestly say M and J have loved listening to The Magic Flute, as have I – the music really is gorgeous (I know that is stating the obvious somewhat) and we’ve had great fun with the books. Have you listened to The Magic Flute with your kids? Or read any of these books I reviewed yesterday? I’d love to hear how you go about introducing classical music to your children.
Today I’m linking up with The Madhouse! Lots of crafty goodness going on over there!
