Last Week in Music....

We have had some fun developing lessons from last week through this week in class.  Our focus this 9 weeks is Music is a Language: Rhythm, Beat, and Meter.  We hope to end our unit with compositions!




Kindergarten:  This week we performed steady beat, with acting, and singing with the book, "Rumble in the Jungle".  The kindergarteners had a wonderful time making the connection between music and literature.  We discussed how music can enhance literature.  (Lesson from Mallet Madness)







First Grade:  First graders have also been studying steady beat and added acting and singing with the book, "Baby Bear".  We turned the book into a call and response, sol la mi, production.  It also served the purpose of allowing us to preview how well students sing sol la and mi to prepare us for our next unit, melody!






2nd Grade:  Our second grade students are working diligently to prepare for our upcoming second grade musical "Spaced Out".  Students completed auditions for special roles and have begun learning their stage dance movements.  Mark your calendars! The show is October 2nd.  In addition to our musical, students have been learning about music rhythms: quarter note and 8th notes.





3rd Grade:  In third grade, students have taken their knowledge of creating rhythms with "Alexander and the Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day!"  Last week, we reviewed rhythms with 3rd grade students, and discussed how to transfer the rhythm of the words to musical notation.  This week, students created sentence about their day and added the musical notation following the specific rules for meter in 2. (Lesson from Mallet Madness)



4th Grade:  Again, our focus this unit has been on beat, rhythm, and meter.  We have spent several weeks working on meter.  This week we added to our lesson from last week and reviewed rhythms with the silly song "Fooba Wooba John".  (Thank you www.bethsmusicnotes.blogspot.com! The kids LOVE it!) This week students added instrumental texture by playing four parts on unpitched percussion to "Fooba Wooba John".  We concluded the activity by writing new silly lyrics to Fooba Wooba.



5th Grade:  In fifth grade, our students have been playing with meter extensively.  We started by listening to several examples and bounced tennis balls in various patterns (meter of 2: bounce catch; meter of 3: bounce-catch-tap in hand; and meter of 4: bounce-catch-tap-tap).  (Quaver's Marvelous World of Music) We then had students move around the room to music and when the music stopped, students had to quickly and quietly get into groups that matched the meter.  (Wonderful idea from John Feireband) This week, we added peacock feathers to Tanz, by Carl Orff and looked at how mixed meter looks in music as well as feels.  This was a valuable lesson to see how music can change meters, unlike music they hear in their everyday lives.  (A wonderful resource from Darva Campbell).  We concluded our day with rhythm hoop improvisational play and how we can enhance literature by "rapping" and adding instrumental interludes to the story, "Frank Was a Monster Who Wanted to Dance".  ~ Get the book here. (Wonderful ideas from www.bethsmusicnotes.blogspot.com)  Or goal is to add new rhythms each week and create their own instrumental interludes and perform.  See our motivation here!