(1) I start by telling the students the Nutcracker story and playing key pieces of music. There are several good books out there, but I like telling the story myself with the help of the drawings from this coloring book.
(2) We focus on two pieces of music: March and Dance of the Sugarplum Fairy. Students listen and dance around the room in different ways. I often have boys march for the March and girls pretend to be ballerinas for the Sugarplum Fairy.
In following lessons, I play the following the PowerPoint and again emphasize the above two pieces (they will be assessed on the difference between them).
I play them as they color (I copy the following pictures into two sides of the same paper). As they listen, they must color the correct side of their sheet. Once they are done coloring, they hold up the correct side as they listen again.
Here is the assessment I use.
