I wanted to share with you some of the fun things your children have
been working on in music this Spring.
We began listening to, and identifying instruments by reading the book
Zin, Zin A Violin. The TV show Reading Rainbow has an episode
available on iTunes that I recommend
.
.
Each week we have been listening to a piece of music from
Saint-Saens Carnival of the Animals. We are working on listening,
instrument identification, and movement. Before I tell the students what
animal the music is about they are invited to move with the music,
tell me what instruments they hear, and guess what animal they think the music
is about. They come up with some amazing answers!
I would also recommend exploring the San Francisco Symphony’s kids website, sfskids.org, to play with instruments and musical terms.
We are working on small two and four beat rhythm patterns.
Children develop the ability to speak rhythm patterns first and then
put them in their bodies.
(If you took Music Together with your child when they were younger you may remember that we always keep the beat on instruments, but only speak rhythm patterns, never play or clap them.)
We began by doing a simple chant called Can You Do What I Do? Ask
you child to teach you how to play. Animal sounds are fun to make up four beat rhythms with!
Some of the older children are ready to clap, stomp, and tap the rhythms that they can say.
We are looking at simple notation. The students all identified that the dot, or
circle, is the note, and how many notes are written on the paper. We
notated rhythms to go along with the books Gobble, Gobble Crash and
Jump, Frog, Jump. Each child clapped along with the story and took
a turn pointing to the rhythm at the end of class.
Today the kids got to notate their own names! Each name is two beats
long. Most of the class has names with two syllables and notated
their name with two quarter notes. A few friends have names with three
syllables and used two eighth notes and one quarter note. All of the
kids were very proud of their work, and so am I!
