Want your kids to have their cake and eat it too? Turn pop music into an engaging and fun lesson with "Identify Timbre in Pop Music!"

Before your begin this lesson, make sure your kids have an understanding of the four families of instruments, Woodwinds, Brass, Percussion, and Strings and know multiple instruments in each family as they will utilize their aural skills during this activity.

As we know, timbre is the quality of sound an instrument makes. Students will listen to 11 examples of popular music and be given 3 multiple choice answers of instruments in the song example. They will then have to choose answer 1, 2, or 3 after listening to the example.

Advance the slide to illuminate the correct answer (in light blue) and assess from there! You can play this individually, as a class, have students write it down, or even play it as a race to see who can get the answer correct first!

All mp3 files are embedded into the slides -- just extract right to your desktop and they should link up and play.

Song examples included:

• High Hopes, Panic! at the Disco

• Hotline Bling, Drake

• 24k Magic, Bruno Mars

• Believer, Imagine Dragons

• Perfect, Ed Sheeran

• Levitating, Dua Lipa

• Into the Unknown, Panic! at the Disco

• Old Town Road, Lil Nas X

• BANG!, AJR

• Don't Start Now, Dua Lipa

• Watermelon Sugar, Harry Styles

  Have a terrific time with this!