Video Game Camp

It was Video Game Camp last weekend, and knowing how popular video games are among kids, you can imagine their excitement.  Here was their chance to explore music in the video game world.  Noelle and I grew up playing Atari.  We spent countless hours trying to beat Ms. Pac-man, or trying to get poor Frogger across the road without becoming roadkill.  We dusted off the old Atari set and games for the occasion, and actually got most of our favorite games working, but unfortunately the sound did not work as well!  Luckily there are many fans on Youtube.  We showed some videos of old Atari games during craft time.  We also had the games out for them to play during downtime.  The weekend really took us back to our childhood.

With years and years of video game production to work with, you might wonder how in the world did we narrow it down to fit in just two afternoons?  Instead of trying to include everyone’s favorite we decided to give the kids a chance to recreate their favorite game or create their own original video game, including the music, sound effects and characters.  And of course we decided that Mario has been around for so long and has become such an icon, we had to learn a Mario song.   Though our time was limited, we accomplished quite a lot.  Here’s a list of the activities:

Learned to sing “I Just Can’t Remember”

Created a diorama of a video game (either an existing, or one they made up)

Recorded the theme and sound effects to go with the diorama (videos below)

Composed a video game theme song

Learned to play Keyboard ensembles “Computer Games” and “Super Mario 3D Land”

Sang and recorded “Mah-na Mah-na” from the Muppets

Sang and played in a keyboard ensemble the Russian theme song from the game Tetris

Played old Atari Video Games

Played video game themed group games

See all of that and more in the videos below: