I’ve posted quite a few art and music-related sites over the past year — enough to warrant their own end-of-year list.

Before I identify individual sites, though, readers might find it helpful to review some “The Best…” lists I’ve also posted during the past twelve months (you can find related lists I posted in 2007 and 2008 at “The Best…” lists):

ART:

The Best Sites To Learn About Diego Rivera

The Best Ways For Students To Create Their Own Online Art Collections

The Best Images Of Weird, Cool & Neat-Looking Buildings (& Ways To Design Your Own)

The Best Collections Of “The Best” Pieces Of Art Ever Created

MUSIC:

The Best Places To Find Lyrics On The Web

The Best Places To Get Royalty-Free Music & Sound Effects

Not “The Best,” But “A List” Of Music Sites

In order for a site to make it on any of my lists, it has to be free and accessible to English Language Learners.  Finally, it has to provide a good language-development opportunity, too.

Here are my choices for The Best Art & Music Sites — 2009:

MUSIC:

Creative Kids Central has a number of very engaging online activities related to classical music. I particularly like its “talking” and musical story on the 1001 Arabian Nights and its online video game on the composer Brahms.

KissTunes is a great web tool that lets you make some music and lets you give it a name and describe it. Then, you get a url address for your creation where others can then leave comments. You don’t even need to register! I’m definitely adding KissTunes to The Best Online Sites For Creating Music.

Using Songs In The English Classroom by Hans Mol, a teacher in Australia, is a short article that was  published in Humanising Language Teaching Magazine.  It gives a very good overview of different language-development activities that can be done with music.

English Child Songs has a ton of ….children’s songs in English that are sung with animation, and also show the lyrics.

ART:

Harcourt has an excellent Multimedia Art Glossary that provides audio support for the text in addition to visual images.

Matisse For Kids is an online interactive from the Baltimore Museum of Art.  It’s accessible to Intermediate English Language Learners and, even though it doesn’t have audio support, is a very engaging guide to artist Henri Matisse’s work and art in general.

The Art of Storytelling is a site from the Delaware Art Museum that allows you pick a painting, write a short story about it, record it with your computer microphone, and email the url address for posting on a student website or blog. It’s extraordinarily simple, and extraordinarily accessible to any level of English Language Learner.  No registration is required.

Feedback is always welcome.

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You might also want to explore the 400 other “The Best…” lists I’ve compiled.