Good Morning! Today in 1st grade music we will look to solidify our experience with the concept of the Steady Beat with our plate passing game. To reinforce the beat, we will also read a pattern of quarter notes that represent our hand motions in the game. We will extend this to reading new notes of Eighth Note pairs and single Half Notes in readiness to play these rhythm patterns on Boomwhacker tubes as accompaniment to a song we will be learning over the next few weeks. Enjoy the day!
Grades 4 and K arrived today! Grade four worked their singing to accomplish more of an even balance among members of the class - as well as to introduce and practice the skill of independent starts. Pitch accuracy is improved with the correct application of singing energy and so we worked to be sure that our bodies were providing the needed energy for singing - singing from the "core!". We also followed the "Sound Hound" to discover the secret song on the entry door written of in the DAY EIGHTEEN post. Two classes of 4th grade identified the song after working to decode the tune in class. YAY!
The All Day Kindergarten completed tasks written in the post of DAY EIGHTEEN as we continued on our journeys of body awareness and directionality. UPS and HIGHS and DOWNS and LOWS - and CIRCLES - And SHALOM - were facets of this week's Kindergarten music classes. We sang descending scale while we stood UP and posed a "funny" pose; we sat DOWN and sang about food we like to eat in the fall; we moved to our MOVE-IT series and identified the body parts that moved and in what ways they were moved by us all. YEP! Up and Down and High and Low and Circles with Hands and Arms and Fingers!
In 5th grade, the SOUND HOUND showed up! On the first day of school this year, a four measure piece of popular music has graced our window at the doorway to the classroom. Students are invited to stop by and try to figure out the name of the song...entries by students have come in to the Envelope in the room. Today we spent time reading and decoding the notes to try to name the piece and allow ALL students to try to identify the song. The three step task is to read RHYTHM, then read PITCH, then put them TOGETHER to have a chance to identify the song. We also worked with BOOMWHACKER Tubes to read and perform the Ostinato Accompaniment that goes with the song. Results will be given to all next week after all our upper grade classes have had their turn to "sniff out" the name of the piece like a SOUND HOUND would! Grades two and three - Sharing in song our favorite Fall Season foods, we all took turns speaking and echoing our favorites within the timing of a slow four beat time frame - plenty of time for improvised favorites like:
PUMPKIN PIE OR APPLE PIE APPLE CRISP AND PUMPKIN DOUGHNUTS TURKEY STUFFING AND BAKED POTATOES CRANBERRY SAUCE AND CORN BREAD Second grade continued building solo singing skills on Kye Kye Kule while passing the stone around the circle; Third grade continued building rhythmic skills during the "shoe passing" song. Still a bit to rehearse to coordinate actions that will allow us to put the shoes into play... Finally instrument playing on rhythmic patterns completed our day using reviews of Half note, Quarter note and Eighth note pair durations. We will come to a time of writing our own patterns using these durations in the coming weeks all to accompany some new songs coming soon! After yesterday's holiday, the 6th grade arrived today to begin the development stages of their Musical Project - writing the second half of the story and musical production "THE O(z)DYSSEY". Writing a project this large to be a Musical performed in January is no small task. We practiced our singing skills in class to GREAT result; We played theater games of imagination; we practiced process of writing and patient listening; we learned the scope of the storyline that each lass is responsible for bringing to life in lyrics and in script; In CHORUS we finished reading the ending pages of the portion of script complete, practiced several of the songs in the story and practiced writing skills for one song the Chorus had to work together in a very short time to develop together using our "writing and patient listening process" learned in class time in the morning.
We left with a knowledge of what each class need to begin and complete in order for the whole story to work together. My My - lots of collaboration still to do in our countdown to putting on the show on January 22. But a GREAT day of work getting us to "FOLLOW THE YELLOW DUST ROAD" of O(z)dysseus homeward journey! "That means HELLO!" cried an excited Kindergartner today in music. We had just started our "WELCOME EVERYONE" song rewriting the beginning for a "HELLO" word in another language the class had discovered earlier in their classroom. Singing "HOLA EVERYONE" was an exciting time and we continued the song to the end. We also spoke some of our names to a rhythm pattern composed using musical blocks of quarter and eight note pairs; We also began our MOVE-IT movement video series isolating upper body movement in arms and hands with music leading phrase lengths to be discovered another day.
5th grade leaders led their classes in a review of BON JOUR and were instrumental in encouraging each class to age appropriate singing; Leaders also led the two part round, each conducting the entry of their part to their subgroup of the class; We also had the experience of opening our own musical restaurants as 6th grade did on Day Thirteen of this Blog - and some very creative menu items were found indeed! Happy Fall!
Today we fell in to leaders leading activities in both grade 2 and 3. Leaders led singing in one part of our two part entry round "BON JOUR" after leading the class in singing the entire song at an increasingly more successful level through modeling sound and expressiveness for the class to follow. Very good progress by all classes here! Grade Two played the circle game to KYE KEY KULE - each line was sung by a different soloist in line around the circle and the response was sung by the entire class. The African "rock" - a large checker piece - was passed around while singing by both soloist and chorus - a rather difficult feat! After their introduction activities and warm ups, Grade Three continued their work on the stick game to incorporate the quarter note rhythm and motions of tapping the stick in measure 7 of the piece before returning to the half note passing rhythm, again while "speaking" the lyrics fo the song. Much fell into place today and as fall continues more will fall into place as well! Big day for 6th grade today! In class, four musical "restaurants" were opened by the classes as each student wrote a rhythmic menu item to contribute to the team restaurant. Restaurants included "Sals Sushi Shack", "Frans French Fusion", "Mike's Mexi-Munchies", and "Tina's Taco-Tina". Menu's ranged from the usual fare to wildly imaginative - just ask YOUR 6th grader for some of the menu treats we spoke in rhythmic action!
In the afternoon, the 6th grade came together in Chorus and were treated to a few snippets of great epic stories in a cartoon format - - Wagner's Ring Cycle and The Barber of Seville by Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd and Disney's Hercules. Our reason - to begin the process of writing another Epic Story - Homer's THE ODYSSEY - into a Merriam School Musical. This is just the next year in a continuing series of writing musicals for 6th Grade at Merriam starting in 2003 - and this year the 6th Grade will work complete last year's beginning of THE ODYSSEY by the THEN 6th grade class in the same LIVING CARTOON style format. Today we sang the beginning songs and chose students to start the script reading process - and at page ten the script abruptly ended at JUST the moment class time was up and things were getting interesting! It will be up to each class to write song lyrics and script for the rest of the story, then rehearse and perform the show on January 22 2015. Stay tuned to see what we will come up with in this exciting adventure! First Grade came today. We continued to step up our singing skills - but the real fun was around food! So many different favorite foods to eat in song from Sushi to Pizza to Sandwiches to Soup - all spoken in time to a clapping and patting pattern. And then we had to put our food on plates! Instead of singing our plate passing game song and using only one plate, we added as many as four plates to the game as we sang and practiced steady beat in passing the plate to the next person in our class singing circle. Well! It sounds like the kids eat well and next week we'll move to the next challenge...!
Here at the end of school having just had a fun time with a Kindergarten class clapping, patting, singing, and composing and playing rhythmic movements. Like yesterday's Kindergarten classes, we introduced the sound of the c major scale through a singing game and then played with rhythm boxes and movements.
For the rest of the day from morning on, 4th graders arrived and left having solidified motions on the steady beat and rhythm accompaniments to our songs. BON JOUR was sung in Round format; Everyone participated in strengthening our singing sound; solos by all were improvised; and our passing game has progressed from one stick to two stick passing during OBWISSAMA. Yes, two stick passing is quite the feat and several "pileups" occurred, but second attempts were always better and all left having had a challenging yet successful time! |
ChrisHave Song, WIll Travel! Archives
October 2014
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