This 2023 CBCA notable picture book of the year is about sharing a love of music. While Isla plays the violin, Bea needs Maestro Gus, the cat ghost of the piano, to help her unlock her musical abilities. This book could be read to children of any age as the start of a music lesson to inspire students to unlock their musical talents or as a whimsical story for a quiet afternoon.

The activities we have created are designed to cater for students from Pre-School to Year 6 as they look at practicing fine motor skills with tracing musical notes, tracing musical instruments mentioned in the story, writing the names of musical instruments and decoding musical notes from the treble staff.

If you would prefer to do a non-paper activity you could have students select a musical instrument to try to unlock their hidden musician or teach them some of the notes on the piano starting with middle C in the middle and let them “play” a piano and keyboard. There are lots of apps which allow the player to learn songs following the lights as they come down the screen and these can be good fun for young children.