Aiken Drum

Our Kindergarteners have sung a song about a man who lives in the moon, and his name is Aiken Drum! But he's no ordinary man, he's made of food! Below are the Aiken Drums created by our Kindergarten classes, made of all their favorite foods!! (Excuse my drawing abilities, it's hard to draw with an expo marker)

Composer of the Month: Danny Elfman!

This month, first and second graders are learning all about the composer Danny Elfman! Danny Elfman is a very famous American composer, most known for his movie and television scores. Elfman is best known for movie soundtracks that he has written, most notable among them being: Spiderman 1, 2, and 3, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory ('05), Alice in Wonderland ('10), Alice Through the Looking Glass ('16), Men in Black 1 and 2, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Corpse Bride, and Frankenweenie. His most notable television score is for the long running TV series The Simpsons. Elfman has written the film score for every sing Tim Burton movie excluding 3; Ed Wood, Sweeny Todd, and Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, due to scheduling issues or personal conflicts. I chose this composer as our COTM for October because of his love of the weird, scary, and mysterious, which fits the mood of Halloween perfectly! We began our study of Elfman with excerpts from his film scores for The Nightmare Before Christmas and Corpse Bride. We will not be watching any of these films, simply listening to the musical excerpts chosen to compare his musical stylings to those of our first COTM, John Williams.

Long Legged Sailor is Done!

We finished our Long Legged Sailor activity today, and these kids worked really hard to get down all the motions and the song to line up! It turned out fantastically!

Any images used are used solely to show the activities done within the classroom, with parental permission from signed audio/videography/photography release forms distributed at the beginning of the year. If your child is posted without your permission by mistake, please email me and I will be more than happy to fix my error. Thank you for such wonderful kids!

Long Legged Sailor

In second grade, we have begun working on a hand game called "Long Legged Sailor." It is a silly song about a long legged sailor and his long legged wife. The point of the game is to be able to sing and do motions at the same time to a steady beat, created by your own hand motions! These two girls are the first to get the entire thing down! I'm sorry it starts after they've already started, my camera wouldn't record for some reason. Look how awesomely they go! They decided to change sailor to soldier, and I decided since Veteran's Day is coming up soon, that's an okay change by me!

Any images used are used solely to show the activities done within the classroom, with parental permission from signed audio/videography/photography release forms distributed at the beginning of the year. If your child is posted without your permission by mistake, please email me and I will be more than happy to fix my error. Thank you for such wonderful kids!

Kindergarten Cars!

In this activity, we are again exploring locomotor travel to a steady beat around the room, this time as cars! Everyone got to be a steering wheel or a driver! The steering wheel was the person holding the paper plate, and the driver was the person holding the shoulders of the steering wheel. The driver had to steer the steering wheel around the room to the beat of the music without bumping into any other cars and having a wreck! Students had to figure out how to steer their cars, especially if the driver was shorter than the steering wheel. The students who "drove" to the steady beat of the music the best won stickers! What's better than a sticker?! I don't know! We had a whole lot of fun in this activity.

Any images used are used solely to show the activities done within the classroom, with parental permission from signed audio/videography/photography release forms distributed at the beginning of the year. If your child is posted without your permission by mistake, please email me and I will be more than happy to fix my error. Thank you for such wonderful kids!

Composer of the Month: John Williams!

This month, first and second graders are learning all about the composer John Williams! John Williams is a very famous composer, most known for his movie music. Now just what is a composer? A composer is a person that writes music. Williams is best known for movie soundtracks that he has written, most notable among them being: Jaws, all seven Star Wars films, the first three Harry Potters, all 4 Indiana Jones movies, '93's Jurassic Park, and E.T. the Extra Terrestrial. We began our study of him this week, learning about the compositions he created for the Olympics in '84, '88, '96, and '02. We listened to his piece, Summoning the Heroes, and discussed how it sounded like it was written to call the heroes (the Olympians) to the Olympics!

What are we doing in first grade?

 This week we are playing a freeze dance stick man game. As the music plays, students dance! When the music pauses, they had to quickly look at the board to see what flash card popped up and try their hardest to match the position showing on the board. These two lovely children are demonstrating one of the most difficult positions to quickly get into, because it was a partner position! We were practicing locomotor movement, and learning about spatial awareness with this activity. Why don't you practice some statue positions at home? It would be fun for the whole family!

Any images used are used solely to show the activities done within the classroom, with parental permission from signed audio/videography/photography release forms distributed at the beginning of the year. If your child is posted without your permission by mistake, please email me and I will be more than happy to fix my error. Thank you for such wonderful kids!