School may not be in session right now, but that doesn’t mean that the opportunity to learn has to cease as well. The Philly POPS recently announced an initiative to help spark kid’s melodic curiosities with a variety of free virtual music education workshops now being offered online, and the curriculum is truly unique. The new bilingual offerings titled POPS in Schools@HOME will offer training, activities and inspiration for students K-12 and will help Philadelphians utilize their time at home for good.
Each week, new videos, activities and instructional content will be uploaded online in both English and Spanish, with all content being provided by the musicians, teaching artists and staff of The Philly POPS.
The content will be broken up into three different sections: Learn, Hear and Notes.
The ‘Learn’ category will feature downloadable instructional videos and activities that both students and parents can enjoy delving into the fundamentals of music. A few highlighted lessons include the beginnings of violin instruction and learning to make percussion instruments at home. The lessons are sorted by grade level, but anyone can join in on the fun.
The ‘Hear’ category will incorporate videos featuring the sounds of student musicians who have participated in POPS in Schools to see how far they’ve come. According to the release, this semester’s Philly POPS co-op students (Dan McCain, leader and bass, John Polanco, trumpet and Lonell Johnson, piano)—all accomplished young musicians attending University of the Arts—have recorded themselves performing songs that span genres and decades for those at home to enjoy.
The ‘Notes’ category will also feature videos of artists, but they will be talking about their own personal inspirations, iconic artists and musical moments that made them who they are today. Hopefully, this will help ignite those at home to think about their own inspirations and continue to spark curiosity while outside of the classroom.
POPS in Schools@HOME was orchestrated with the Philly POPS by Gilberto Vega, the new programming will help continue the organization’s typical POPS in Schools initiative and will now reach an even broader audience. The School District of Philadelphia recently added the POPSinSchools@Home content to its Google Classroom, making it available to more than 200,000 students in the Greater Philadelphia area. Reaching the broad audience will certainly help those at home continue to fuel their musical abilities, curiosities and hopefully make this time a little more meaningful.
To find out more information, visit phillypops.org.
