Parents may regret repeating the adage “practice makes perfect” to their children when they find out the latest tool to enter music teachers’ classrooms around the country. Sixty music teachers are working with game manufacturer Nintendo and the National Music Education Association to bring the game “Wii Music” into classrooms, according to MSNBC.
Unlike popular music-oriented video games like “Guitar Hero” and “Rock Band,” “Wii Music” doesn’t make players perform existing songs. Rather, players experiment with 60 instruments to improvise and compose their own music—a feature that appeals to S.C. music teacher Helen Krofchick.
“Children spend a lot of their classroom time following specific directions—what to read, what to do—and very little time actually expressing themselves in the arts,” Krofchick says. “Some can be shy to come forward and actually sort of jump in and try something. But if anything is presented to a child in the form of a game, it’s going to be much more student-friendly.”