Four seasons in the mood (EN-CUR-145)

This learning scenario aims to teach students to define the weather conditions in the seasons and express their feelings, moods according to the seasons through art and music. Students have answer questions and connect their moods to the seasons. They listen to music and write what seasons each sound represents according to them and how they felt during the listening process.

This learning scenario has been developed during the English version of the “Europeana in your classroom: building 21st-century competences with digital cultural heritage” online course. The course aimed to improve teachers’ understanding of cultural heritage in order to efficiently integrate it into their lessons and practices. The courses can be accessed here.

Authors: Dila Cadun Selvi

Age of students: 11-12 years

Subject and topic: English, Art, Music. The seasons changing.

Seasonal mood through art and music

Regardless of how abstract it is, art can help make emotions more concrete, palpable. A piece of art will not necessarily evoke the same emotion in the viewer as the creator, and every person might feel different when exposed to the same artpiece. Therefore art does not only help understanding our emotions, but also the emotions of others. It comes also as no surprise that seasons are always related to specific moods; scientific studies show that our mood can swing depending on the length of days and nights. Maybe this is one reason for the many pieces of art representing seasons. Europeana has great examples for these.

Seasons are related to different activities in the nature. Winter is the time for hibernation. For some people, this might mean a time for silent self-reflection, and passivity before going for action, as in when we are depressed. For others, this might mean gathering strength for the future; winter might even evoke feelings of safety, staying home in the warmth, close to family and friends. This learning scenario can help students recognize these differences.

Connecting seasons to music

As mentioned, this learning scenario aims to teach students to define the weather conditions in the seasons and express their feelings, moods according to the seasons through art and music. Students have answer questions and connect their moods to the seasons. They listen to music and write what seasons each sound represents according to them and how they felt during the listening process.

Students start with discussing weather conditions in different seasons, and how they feel as a result. Students are also asked what kind of music they feel like listening to when it rains, it snows, or it is sunny. We can also split students into groups based on their season preference on a Kahoot game, creating 4 seasonal teams.

Students then search on Europeana for images that represent summer, winter, spring or autumn. They also tell what emotion they feel looking at each picture. Here, we can let students think about their answer and not interfere.

Finally, we play various sound clips and ask them what season each sound clip or music makes them think of.

Painting your seasonal mood

The final step is to draw their seasonal mood. Students draw and paint pictures representing their feelings and the season according to the sound they listened to. The most representative seasonal painting can be voted by the whole class through a Mentimeter.