Christmas Program Practice

Music = Community

Music is the one thing in the world that everyone shares, no matter the culture, religion, or country. It is a truly unique unifying event that creates and builds community. In the music room, we are learning to work together in our school community to create beautiful movement and music. Here, our Kindergarteners are having their first community building exercise. We play musical houses, instead of musical chairs, where once the music goes off, everyone must be in a "house" (hula-hoop). I take one house away each time the music starts again, until we are one big group inside one house. Each time you enter a house, you must grab hands with the others in your house and travel when the music returns together as a family. It shows the students that in music, no one is left out. Everyone plays, everyone sings, everyone dances, because we are one big music family. Check out some of our fun below!

Creative Movement and Awareness of Space

Have you ever noticed that kiddos seem to get in the space of others around them without even noticing it? It is because the neurons for special awareness have not yet developed fully and are still in need of molding. In music class, we are trying to exercise those neurons by practicing putting our bodies in different shapes while keeping our own space. Their goal was to form the shape of whatever card I was holding up without touching someone else near them. It's a lot harder than it looks! Check out these awesome kiddos learning about personal space!

Instrument Exploration

This week, the Kindergarteners got to explore classroom instruments for the first time! They were split into groups and rotated through the different percussion instrument groups. They got to play 5 different groups of instruments! They were: the woods, the shaker/scrapers, the metals, the membranes (drums), and the pitched percussion! We had a blast making chaotic music together!

Instrument Petting Zoo!!

To kick off the year right, open house started with an Instrument Petting Zoo! Kiddos were invited to enter the music room to explore the different instruments of the class after meeting their teacher, to get a little taste of what music would be all about. The students and their families had so much fun adventuring through the zoo, and are excited for music this year!

Family to Music Week was awesome!!!

The kids and I want to thank all of the wonderful family members who came to join us this past week for Bring Your Parent (Family) to Music Week as part of our celebration for Music in Our Schools Month! The students have been working hard and learning to be as musical as they can be, and they love being able to share that with family members who don't normally get to see.

Just look at these kiddos having fun with their family members this week!

Lyla and her mom have so much fun!

Sometimes we have to get on the floor to have some fun!

Hand-clapping games are so fun when we do them together!

Let's line dance with our families! What better way to have fun?!

Dad dancing with his baby girl!

We can never get enough of hand-clapping games, even with dad!

Let's dance dad!

We had so much fun with our families, and we can't wait to enjoy it again next year during Bring Your Family to Music Week in Music in our Schools Month!

Second Grade Program Practice

The Second Grade Program is coming up soon on May 3! Here I have provided a PowerPoint with lyrics and the music for our awesome second graders to practice with at home. I hope you enjoy the music being brought home by your wonderful kids!

First Grade Practice

Here are sound clips or recordings of classes working on the program music that your students can practice with! As I get more recordings completed for all of the songs, I will make sure to have them added!

I'm Hungry!



We Are Dancing



In the Woods

Long Legged Sailor



Grizzly Bear



Old King Glory



Bate Bate Chocolate



Bobby Shafto



Pease Porridge

Composer of the Month: Billie Holiday

For the month of February, students in Second Grade studied the composer Billie Holiday. Billie Holiday was one of the very first black female composers of the Jazz genre, and became extremely famous for her ability to improvise. While Holiday grew up in a very difficult environment, bouncing from place to place until finally landing in a home with her aunt's mother-in-law, she was able to find solace in her musical ability and began singing public performances at the age of 14. She made her first record deal at the age of 18 and went on to become one of the most famous jazz singers of all time.

As part of our project studying Billie Holiday, students had were asked to complete three worksheets this month. For the first one, they were presented with a song by Billie Holiday and asked to draw a picture of what the song made them think of. For the second worksheet of the project, students were asked to complete a scavenger hunt, looking around the room at information posted about Holiday and writing the information they discovered about her. For the final worksheet, they were again asked to listen to music by Holiday and this time write a paragraph (using complete sentences) of what the song made them think of and WHY it made them think of this.

Here are some completed projects!

Sing Me Another!

Second Grade has begun working on a new rhythm, that we call Du-Da-Di. This rhythm can be felt in songs where eighth notes are grouped in threes instead of twos with Du-De from our previously learned rhythms. Here, you can hear a second grade group singing a song we have recently learned that uses this rhythm. Aren't their voices beautiful!?

Green Grass Grew All Around and more!

First Grade is getting ready for their upcoming concert during Music in our Schools Month on March 22! While learning the songs is important, so is having fun while we do it. To learn our songs for our program, we are playing games that extend the concepts of our songs, while also allowing us to have fun doing it!

Here we are playing "We Are Dancing," one of our songs for the program!

Here we are singing "Green Grass Grew All Around," a cyclical song that could never end! It's extremely silly AND long, but the kids are doing a great job learning all the words!

Rhythm Writing

Over the past 4 months, students in second grade have been working on learning to speak and read rhythms! We have been learning our rhythms in the same way you learn to speak your native language; by hearing and speaking them first, then reading them (learning the symbols for them), and then once you can successfully read them, we learn to write them. All of our second grade students can successfully speak, read, and now write the rhythms for quarter notes (du), eighth notes (du-de), and quarter rests (sh!).

Here we can see groups of second graders writing rote (which means copying) rhythms on their first time writing! We are practicing writing our rhythm notation. Typically, students have issues with this because they write them as lollipops, where they color in the circle and then draw a line in the middle. We are working on not doing this, instead writing the letter d or p and coloring in the circle for our notes. These kiddos are extremely successful at this as you can see!

Here we have students working on worksheets to create their own rhythmic patterns. Mastery of a subject means they can successfully and correctly create (or improvise) their own, and then speak or play it on an instrument correctly. Our second graders have successfully gained mastery over these rhythms, and we are starting to move on to new rhythms now!