Lesson 12

Next week parent’s attend and tuition is due on the 20th! (last payment for this semester)

Just a head's up: Parents also attend for the last lesson of the semester which is Station Day! Station Day offers a chance for me to meet one-on-one with you both (parent and student) to celebrate your child’s accomplishments thus far! Students will enjoy a sort of “progressive dinner” approach to several stations set up in the studio to enjoy and review skills learned throughout the semester. Let’s Play Music is a results-based program and Station Days are a fun tradition to highlight and celebrate those accomplishments. It is also a fun reminder that we are halfway through the process that is working to develop complete musicians!

Celebrate Connection
A few ideas to bring playfulness to practice time!

• Set a stopwatch on a parent's phone and time how long it takes to get through a song with perfect, even rhythm, and chords.
• Put on a concert for stuffed animals.
• Sing along with a Spanish accent.

Homework: p. 40-41 Students fill in the keys they should play on the keyboard using the notes on the staff as reference.

Mystery Bug
We played a new rhythm game called Mystery Bug. Three separate rhythm cards are laid out on the 1st, 2nd, and 4th beat. The 3rd beat is empty and is the Mystery Bug. The entire 4 count measure is played and the students identified which rhythm (bug) was missing on the 3rd beat. Then we all counted and played the entire 4 count measure. You can play a variation of this at home by clapping different bugs and inviting your child to clap AND say what bug they heard. Ear training, rhythm training, and internalizing the steady beat is happening all at once!

Brown Jug
The Brown Jug game is another fun activity to play at home with a parent or whole family. You just need a playground ball and a little bit of room to roll and catch. It is easier at first to chant "roll, catch" and then begin the song. This is a great way to emphasize how the hands and body must keep the beat while making music!

Echo Edna
This week Echo Edna placed various patterns of steps and skips on the board to sight read. She invited us to look at the board and think of two questions before we played the pattern. 1) Is it a step or skip? AND 2) Does it go up or down? Walking through both of these steps will help in all sight reading as well as the theory assignment this week.

With Thanksgiving just around the corner, we can find and play the Red, Blue and Yellow chords in 5 Fat Turkeys from last year!

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!