Discover your wild side with animal sounds

Taking inspiration from French composer Camille Saint-Saëns' Carnival of the Animals, we've teamed up with BBC Proms to create an activity to help you and your children unleash your wild side.

Before we begin, let's make sure we know what a rhythm is. It's the pattern of long and short sounds you hear in music.

You're going to be building up amazing animal-inspired rhythms using just your bodies and voices, no instruments required - and we have wonderful musicians, Stewart Wilson and Konya Kanneh-Mason, to show us how. There's four different animals, each inspiring their very own sound and rhythm.

Here are the instructions to share with your child.

Animal one – The Elephant

Elephants are known for having big stamping feet and long trunks for making a big trumpeting sound. Explore making these sounds too.

• Try stamping your feet like an elephant.

• Make a trumpeting sound.

• Wave your arm imitating a trunk in front of you.

Now, use all those sounds and actions to build up a rhythm.

For example, it could go something like: a stamp, a wave of a trunk, sound of a trunk, stamp, stamp.

You can watch Stewart giving a great example in the video below.

Animal two – The Cuckoo

Here, encourage your children to try making a cuc-koo sound and imitating the beating of wings with a clap.

The final piece could sound something like: cuc–koo, clap, clap, cuc-koo, clap, clap!

Watch this video from BBC Proms Family, which will break down all of the steps for you.

Animal three – The Kangaroo

Kangaroos love to jump around, so it's time to do the same!

• Practise making a boing sound - watch the video for a reference.

• Now, jump to make a thumping sound.

• To waggle a tail, wave an arm behind you with a wah wah sound.

Once you've practised, you can put them together in a rhythm. It might be something like this: boing, a thump, a wah wah, and a boing!

Animal four - The Donkey

Explore making some familiar donkey-inspired noises, including:

• A hee-haw sound

• A clip-clop sound to imitate the clapping of hooves. Do this by bringing your hands together and saying clip-clop.

• And a donkey-inspired lip trill, where your lips buzz or flap together as you blow out air.

Here's an example of a rhythm sequence you can make with this: hee–haw, clip-clop, donkey lip trill, clip-clop, hee–haw.

Finally - bring it all together

Now it’s time for your family to put together your masterpiece and showcase your animal extravaganza. Your full score could be something like: elephant, kangaroo, cuckoo, kangaroo.

Go wild!

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