HEY, kids do you have any idea what is an orchestra? No, doesn’t matter, because I have a site for you which feature a nice selection of online Flash and Java activities which introduce kids to various aspects of orchestra and music.

Sphinx Kids is a website connected to the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. Aimed at the younger generation, the website is loaded with interesting musical interactive games and videos and brief information about instrument as well as composers and artists.

The website doesn’t need any registration or log in information so you can start right away. The simple yet colourful homepage has ten sections to go through. You can explore through famous composers, minority composers (that is from ethnic minorities in the USA), orchestral instruments, or create your own rhythm band. One of the interesting section is a nicely animated ‘instrument storage room’ where an animated character walks through categorically divided instruments’ rooms such as, strings, woodwinds, brass and percussions, each having various instruments in them; you can read about them by click any of your choice. And if you are a master of match games, this site provides you a variety of composers/artists to match with the music they played. So you can either play music match by composers or by instruments.

Apart from that, the website has no ads so there are no distractions at all. However, Sphinx Kids works best with a high speed internet connection. Also, some of the games on this site require Flash or Shockwave. If you don’t have these on your computer, you can download them for free from this site. So kids enjoy a musical weekend!

http://www.sphinxkids.org