TVO Learn is designed to meet each student where they are on their learning journey. Learning Activities are comprehensive and require guided instruction from an adult, while Resources for Learning, Apply the Learning prompts and Vocabulary lists work well to reinforce specific skills or to enable independent exploration of a subject. Use these helpful tips to get the most from TVO Learn.
How to Use These Resources
Curriculum Overview
In the Grade 1 arts curriculum, learners are encouraged to be creative every day.
- In Dance, students begin to use personal experience, imagination, and familiar movements to develop a movement vocabulary, to respond to prompts and express ideas, and to communicate their thoughts and feelings in various situations.
- Drama, explores the student’s self, family, personal experiences, and world. Through guided practice, students begin to develop the ability to use creative and critical thinking processes, building upon prior knowledge and experience from their diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds.
- In Music, students experience and explore the elements of music through singing, listening to, and moving to a variety of songs, rhymes, and chants.
- In Visual Arts, students begin to explore art in the world around them, to understand that people all over the world create and enjoy art, and to develop the ability to communicate about their immediate environment and interests through visual images.
The arts curriculum is divided into four strands:
- Dance
- Drama
- Music
- Visual Arts
Interested in learning more? View Curriculum
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Learning Activities
Learning Activities provide opportunity for deeper exploration of a subject. Organized by grade and topic (or strand), students should be guided through each Learning Activity by an adult. Before clicking on a topic to prepare for or begin this guided instruction, be sure to read these helpful tips about how to get the most out of TVO Learn.
Learning Activities 
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Resources for Learning
Chosen by TVO educators, these resources support the curriculum outlined above. Review the below list of options along with the activities. Then, read, watch, listen or play to build understanding and knowledge.
Please be aware by accessing the resources below you will be leaving TVO Learn and entering other TVO domains that are subject to different privacy policies and terms of use.
Complete the suggested activities using these resources and other TVO resources.
Apply the Learning
Choose from the following to consolidate learning across The Arts.
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Make a list of everyday movements you make. Choose one of those movements (waving, skipping, jumping, walking). How can you change the action by making the movement bigger or smaller, faster or slower? How will the speed or rhythm of the movement change?
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Imagine you a character from a story seeing a dragon for the first time. How did that character feel when they encountered a scary situation? How can you show that emotion with movements and position of your body, head, arms and legs?
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Imagine you are a seed in the ground. Create a dance sentence or phrase to show how you would grow into a tree?
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Choose one of the following dances to learn more about: Chinese ribbon dance, Highland fling, powwow dance styles. What do you notice about the way the dancers use their body.
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Imagine you are role playing the wind in dramatic play. What household items or props might you use to get into character?
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Imagine your favourite story. How might you act out how this story will end without using words?
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Think about celebrations or events in your community. Draw or explain some events where you have noticed people dressing up or pretending to be someone else.
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Create a list of songs that might help put a baby to sleep. How might this music help the baby go to sleep?
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Show the rhythm of a song using a tool of your choice. (e.g. tapping spoons, drawing shapes or using your body)
- Describe the colours or pictures you imagine as different types of music plays.
- Create painting that communicates your feelings about a special occasion or event in your life. Create a sculpture of a favourite musical instrument made with found objects; Create a watercolour painting of a favourite part of the schoolyard; an assemblage in which images and objects from home and school are used to represent special memories.
- How might you use repeated lines and shapes to depict the texture of snake, lizard, leopard or dinosaur skin? What did you do in your drawing to help people understand what you mean or what you are thinking?
- What are some examples of special colours used for different festivals? Does your school have its own colours or a symbol? Why do you think the school choose those colours or that symbol?
- View a painting of a scene or a mural If you could take a walk this picture, where would you go? Where would you place yourself if you were in the picture? What story does the art work tell?
Vocabulary
Review this list of vocabulary associated with the curriculum. Practice spelling, research definitions, and find these vocabulary words when engaging with the TVO resources or completing learning activities.
Students should understand and be able to apply these words in context.
- Dance
- Drama
- Music
- Visual Arts
body bases
body zones
directions
energy
levels
locomotor movements
non-locomotor movements
quality
relationship
rhythm
tempo
dramatic play
gestures
in role
out of role
performance
role play
theatre
tradition
composition
eighth note
melody
percussion
rhythm
quarter note
quarter rest
contrast
cool colours
horizon line
primary colours
spiral
straight line
texture
warm colours
wavy line
zig zag line