Kindergarten Music
Students begin the New Year with an old song, changed to now sing, "It's a Brand New Year." The children enjoy recognizing the tune, and also enjoy sharing their vacation highlights with the class. Daily rhythm activities now use rhythm syllables - ta, ti-ti, - as we begin to work toward reading rhythm notation. Rhymes continue to be the basis for much of our work, including finger-plays, where the children move their hands to match the rhymes. With repetition, these can be memorized and help expand vocabulary, along with a sense of steady beat. Throughout the next several weeks, winter will be a repeating concept, in class and out:) We will use feathers to help the children capture that magical feeling of a gentle snowfall, both with their bodies and their voices and instruments. "The Snowy Day" by Ezra Jack Keats, and rhymes and songs about snow will help us further grasp the concepts of up and down, high and low, and creative movement and exploration.
First Grade Music
Music classes begin daily with rhythm - echo clapping, rhythm canons and reading rhythms. In January, we add a speed element to rhythm, and we have started timing our flashcard reading. Each child reads one card, and we tally our time - which is more fun as we stack it against other first grade classes. They are doing great! January also begins our unit studying, "Carnival of the Animals" by Camille Saint-Saens. Students love listening to sections of the pieces and trying to figure out which animal is represented by the music. Then, first graders are terrific at imitating animals:) Class time will offer many listenings, sometimes with movement and sometimes just carefully listening, as well as some info about Saint-Saens. Your child will know how to pronounce his name, be able to tell you what a composer does, and identify several movements of the piece. We will watch a performance of the piece, and later in the month the children will create their own piece of music to represent an animal!
Second Grade Music
Students here are also in the rhythm relay - where we time the flashcard reading. Second grade classes are working with the following rhythm syllables - ta (quarter note), ti-ti (2 eight notes beamed or flagged), ta -a (half note), quarter and half rest, ti (one eight note), which includes a bit of syncopation - or accenting off beats. They are doing great. The next few weeks we explore the science behind sound. We began with tuning forks. It's great fun to see how they vibrate, and what that does when placed in a bowl of water. The kids love to see the splash, and it visually helps them identify the vibration. We feel our throats to help grasp the vibration of vocal cords. More experiments will be coming involving making objects move by using tuning forks and their vibration, changing sound waves by creating megaphones, and using rubber bands to illustrate the concept of fast and slow vibration and how that relates to pitch. We will look into the piano and other instruments to see how vibration affects pitch.