Mary Poppins: Ideas for the Classroom

Mary Poppins is one of my favorite musicals.  I love the magic of make-believe and love the family positive message.  I often rotate musicals by the year so by the time my students leave my building they have seen 5-6 classic musicals.  I tend to show the same musical to multiple grade levels and use different activities with each group.

I've compiled many of these activities into Mega Packs that you can purchase in my store.  Each pack contains a viewing guide, coloring sheets and other worksheets appropriate for K-6.  I've used these resources with 7th and 8th graders and some with a high school general music class.  In this post, I'm going to highlight a few of the activities I use.

With 5th and 6th grades we watch Mary Poppins with a viewing guide.  Younger grades often struggle to keep up with the questions while watching, so I don't usually use viewing guides with them.  The viewing guides ask students to answer questions about what is going on in the video.  Most of the questions aren't really for musical assessment but more to keep them on task.  This works great if they start the musical or finish it with a sub.  I usually don't get musical subs so it is an activity that any sub feels comfortable with.

In the Mary Poppins set, I have included a worksheet that includes names of people and things from the musical are listed.  Students are asked to identify the number of syllables in each and then match them with notation.

I have also included graphic organizers that ask students to compare and contrast songs from the musical.  I don't have a photo of one of those, but they are a quick and easy way to incorporate writing.  I love that they provide an opportunity for students to refer to the word wall and write using musical terminology.

For my younger learners, I love to use a coloring sheet while listening to the soundtrack.  After they have seen the movie, they often want to sing along.  I love that!

Character analysis is an important skill.  I've included several sheets and a couple of different ways for students to share what they know about the characters and compare them.  I love what this one says: Mary Poppins is pretty.  She is smart and knows how to take care of kids.

Indeed!

Analyzing other themes in the musical can sometimes take a great deal of time.  In the Mary Poppins set, I've included a couple of worksheets to help with this.  In the one pictured above students are asked to explain how ordinary objects become extraordinary when Mary Poppins is around.

In each of the Musical Mega Packs I've included sheets that ask students to illustrate a song from the musical.  I love the creative ways that students approach this.  Sometimes I'll send these sheets home for them to finish and then display them outside of my classroom or on a bulletin board.

You can get the Mary Poppins set HERE.

It is also part of a larger, growing bundle that already has TEN musical mega packs and a couple of bonus files included.  Check it out HERE.

Another activity that I use is the My Book of Mary Poppins.  This is another activity that I might use while listening to the soundtrack with K-2.  This is such a nice momento for students to take home and classroom teachers LOVE the finished project too!

I usually print and staple the books together to same time with my Kindergarten classes.  The other groups can usually put theirs together and complete most of it during class.  The whole set contains 14 different pages for students to complete.  You can download it HERE.

In addition to watching the movie and completing some of the activities above we will often learn a song or two from the musical.  I love this arrangement by John Jacobson.  If you are a Music Express subscriber you may have this version of Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.

I hope you enjoy some of these activities and consider using Mary Poppins with your classes this year!  If you are on Pinterest, you might enjoy this Pinterest board on Musicals:

Follow The Bulletin Board Lady-Tracy King's board Music Class - Musicals on Pinterest.