 Parents will come next week and tuition is due! We are having so much fun in class. I can’t believe how easily the kids understand the musical concepts we are learning. Remember, every song has a purpose. We aren’t just playing with barnyard animals and catching foxes to take up the time! Each activity we do has a musical skill and/or concept connected to it. As the teacher, I’m always striving to have fun with each activity, but making sure the kids feel the steady beat or hear the SOL SOL DO hiding in the last part of the song. Your student is subconsciously internalizing these things and they don’t even know it! Don’t you wish all learning could take place this way? I just love this curriculum! Homework: p. 34–35 Students will spend time listening to the songs listed to determine which ending(s) is/are used. There could be more than one box marked!  Taking Baby Steps Our purpose here is to imitate rhythm and reinforcing the concept of lines and spaces on the staff. Identify Solfege Patterns by Sound I threw both a MI RE DO and a SOL SOL DO into our Let’s Play Music song and your student got to identify which one I was singing. Those ears are getting smarter everyday! Puppet Show Today we performed the puppet show with our full bodies! We had fun learning the themes over the last 8 weeks. Next week we'll introduce a new puppet show. Ooooo Halloween This is a great song for teaching internal rhythm. It helps us feel the internal beat while no music is sounding so each student will develop their own "sense of time." Feeling a metronome in their head and body is important when developing the full musician inside.  Our world is full of rhythm. The waxing and waning of the moon, the ebb and flow of the tide, the very passage of time itself are all controlled by predictable rhythms. As humans, we spend nine months before birth listening to the rhythmic beating of our mother’s heart. The rest of our lives are lived out against the backdrop of our own rhythmic breathing. Our speech and movements are naturally rhythmic. Whether we are walking, running, swimming or dancing, rhythm permeates our lives to such an extent that we rarely think about it. It is virtually impossible to walk without some sense of rhythm. It is of no wonder then, that rhythm is often seen as the most important building block of music and that developing an accurate sense of rhythm is central to all music-making. Children love to move their bodies and this is one of the earliest musical skills they develop, swaying to the music, clapping and dancing. Simple activities and games involving dance and movement are therefore ideal as a starting point for this all important skill. Marching in time to music, drumming, clapping games and chanting rhymes are all quick and fun activities that young children will enjoy and gain instant gratification from. Also, parents if you have the time, read this article about how music improves babies brain responses. If you haven't done the Halloween activity, here it is again! For my convenience, I have preloaded content for the whole semester. I will update each future post with specific time-sensitive info before I send the link each week. If you choose to read ahead you might see details that don’t apply to your child’s class. For this reason I do not recommend reading ahead. Thank you!
No class this upcoming week... Happy Fall Break! Hello, week number 7! Boy, time sure does fly. Can you believe we are half way through the semester?! Everyone did such a great job of identifying the lines and spaces of the staff. Keep practicing lines and spaces on the staff. Ask your kiddo if the note is on a line or space. Then follow up by asking them which line or space number the note is on. Remember, mistakes are good! Mistakes are an important part of the learning cycle. Congrats on such well behaved kids. It is truly my pleasure to work with such wonderful precious students. I LOVE MY JOB! No parents next week. Homework: p. 32–33 Students identify higher notes on the staff. Scotland's Burning We practiced our solfege hand signs and audiation today in class. Audiation is the ability to accurately hear musical sounds in your head when they are not being sounded aloud. This is a foundational skill that allows students to internalize notes and rhythms and make sense of rhythm or notes that they see written. Ooooo Halloween Singing like a ghost is a great vocal channeling exercise. We are practicing a pure, natural head tone while extending the child’s vocal range and helping them to experiment with the sounds their voice can make. Distinguishing High and Low sounds The staff determines pitch — the top of the staff is high sounds, the bottom is lower sounds. The placement of notes (or balloons!) determines if the sound moves up, down, or stays the same. When we sing "DO is Home" we can help distinguish sounds that are "too high" or "too low", or "right on". This skill is intended to develop and train the ear. This will lead the students to developing relative pitch (or even perfect pitch!) Puppet Show - The Magic Lamp Identifying the melodic classical themes is one purpose of our Magical Lamp puppet show. It aids us in hearing and identify different themes in classical music, which makes the music come alive! Because nearly every music system in the world uses the same five notes—known as the pentatonic scale—many people say these notes are “hardwired” into our brains. Howard Goodall, Emmy-winning composer and author of The Story of Music, says these notes are so fundamental that it seems that they were pre-installed in us when we were born. He goes as far as to call these notes a “human genetic inheritance.” In this video, always-entertaining Bobby McFerrin uses the pentatonic scale to “play” an audience, and in the process provides a fascinating demonstration of how our brains are musically wired. Also, with Halloween quickly approaching, we want to encourage you to do this fun Halloween activity with your students. For my convenience, I have preloaded content for the whole semester. I will update each future post with specific time-sensitive info before I send the link each week. If you choose to read ahead you might see details that don’t apply to your child’s class. For this reason I do not recommend reading ahead. Thank you!
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Clara McDonaldAs a music educator of 25 years, my passion is infusing others with music! Archives
September 2022
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