Kindergarten students learned how to hold mallets this week! We practiced using the mallets to play a glissando on our xylophones while we spoke "Jack and Jill." We read the book 10 in the Bed and used our singing voices to help tell the story. I am working with the kids on using their head voices to match my pitch. One important thing we learn in kindergarten is that everybody has 4 voices. These voices are: whisper voice, singing voice, speaking voice, and calling voice.
We practiced matching pitch in first grade, too! The kids sang their names when I threw a ball to them, using the pitches sol, mi, and la. We haven't identified these pitches yet, but the kids are having fun exploring them. We also used our bodies to show high sounds and low sounds.
Second graders also worked on the pitches sol, mi, and la, but we labeled them! First we talked about how they were like a stop light: there is a high pitch, a middle pitch and a low pitch. We learned a song about a traffic light and even danced to show what each color tells us to do. Then we used the Promethean Board to review unpitched percussion instruments in our classroom.
Third graders had a great time singing and moving to the pitches mi, re, and do. We transferred them to the barred instruments and played a fun rotation game. We played instruments while we sang to the A section of the song "Down to the Baker Shop" and created the B section by discussing what we would buy at a baker shop. We even wrote the rhythm of the words on the Promethean Board!
Fourth graders will begin learning their recorders next week! To help us prepare, we reviewed the names of the notes on the treble staff. We learned about syncopated rhythms and performed a song that uses them frequently. The song, "Shake the Papaya Down," has two sections. During the A section we sang and walked to the steady beat. During the B section we performed a simple hand game with partners. The students also used higher level thinking skills to discover how to play a song on xylophones that we sang. Here they are playing "Hot Cross Buns."
Fifth graders reviewed our dance to "The Pink Panther." We hope you enjoy the video below of them showing off the A and B sections. We also reviewed the song we played on instruments last week, "Di Solda La" and extended it to drums and other barred instruments. Because we will begin recorder next week, we also reviewed the line and space notes of the treble staff.
