Sunday, October 30, 2011
POV Fall Festival
Zack and I had so much fun leading the "Cake Dance" at Point O'View's fall festival!
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
Learning New Things
The past two weeks have been full of new concepts for the kids at POV. We are exploring new instruments, notes, and rhythms.
Kindergarten is continuing to sing about farm animals. This week we sang about lambs and hens. We also played two new instruments, the tambourine and the maracas. We use the same song every week to introduce a new animal and instrument.
With Halloween approaching, first grade has been talking about spiders and black cats. We have been improvising movement to different versions of "The Itsy Bitsy Spider." We even played the xylophones to show the spiders moving up and down the water spout. The students have been practicing using their bodies to show rhythms and steady beats.
Second graders are really stepping up their game with rhythm practice. This week we learned two new music symbols- the half note and the half rest. We also practiced writing rhythms on our whiteboards. Have your students show you how to write "ta" and "ti-ti" at home. We also sang and played our xylophones to a song about Christopher Columbus.
This week in third grade, we began working on the concept of musical questions and answers. In this video, students are playing a question on the drum and answering on the temple blocks. We have also started labeling and singing the notes do, re, mi, so, and la on the 5 line music staff. This is the beginning of our journey to read music!
Fourth graders continue to practice their recorders. We have now learned the notes B, A, and G. We can also read them on the staff. Students are encouraged to take their recorders home and practice these notes.
The fifth graders are on a roll with their recorders! This week we learned to play our first song, "BAG Review." The students not only have to show proper technique, but they now have to read music from the Promethean Board! We also played the barred instruments to accompany a song this week.
Come back next week and see what we will be learning! Our Halloween lessons are starting. During Halloween, we sing about candy, costumes, and trick-or-treating. Please feel free to email me at ergriffi@vbschools.com if you are interested in knowing what your child's Halloween lesson will incude.
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
All about Singing
The last week of September was a ton of fun in music class! We played lots of instruments, used our singing voices, and danced until we dropped!
Kindergarten students are beginning a unit on farm animals. We sang "Going to the Farm" and talked about the first animal of our unit: the duck. We walked like ducks and sang several songs about ducks. In this video, watching Mrs. Swann's class use lummi sticks to tap the rhythm of the "quacks."
First graders practiced using barred instruments this week. We played a rotation game while practicing playing up and down to the poem "Hickory Dickory Dock." The students played the instruments during the A section then moved to a different instrument during the B section. The students were assessed this week on using their high voices to sing their names on the sol-mi interval.
Second graders also played barred instruments this week. We used a chord bordun to accompany the traffic light song. The classes were also able to dance to "Draw a Bucket of Water." The focus of this dance was teamwork and cooperation. The kids had to work together to be successful. The second graders were also assessed on rhythm reading this week. They read 4 beat rhythm patterns by themselves using the rhythm syllables "ta" and "ti."
Third graders began the week by dancing to La Raspa. This dance is more commonly known as the Mexican Hat Dance. We began learning all about harmony, too! The students sang a song called "Remember Me" and learned a vocal ostinato to go along with it. An ostinato is a pattern that repeats- a vocal ostinato is an ostinato we sing. We then took this song and put it on the barred instruments. We accompanied it using a broken bordun, where students alternate hands between two notes. We will be practicing that a lot this year!
In fourth grade, the students got to play their recorders for the very first time! I will be posting videos on the blog soon to remind students how to play their recorders. Some things to remember are:
-left hand on top
-leaks cause squeaks
-say "du" into the recorder to create sound, don't blow into it
-B is played by covering the top hole on the front and the only hole in the back
We also began learning our song for the December DARE graduation!
Fifth graders also began playing our recorders this week. We began with a review of how to hold the recorder, how to breathe into it, and how to play the notes B, A, and G. We then had a discussion about scales. Scales are groups of notes that songs are based around. The three scales we talked about were Major, Minor, and Pentatonic. Ask your child what pitch begins each scale.
Kindergarten students are beginning a unit on farm animals. We sang "Going to the Farm" and talked about the first animal of our unit: the duck. We walked like ducks and sang several songs about ducks. In this video, watching Mrs. Swann's class use lummi sticks to tap the rhythm of the "quacks."
First graders practiced using barred instruments this week. We played a rotation game while practicing playing up and down to the poem "Hickory Dickory Dock." The students played the instruments during the A section then moved to a different instrument during the B section. The students were assessed this week on using their high voices to sing their names on the sol-mi interval.
Second graders also played barred instruments this week. We used a chord bordun to accompany the traffic light song. The classes were also able to dance to "Draw a Bucket of Water." The focus of this dance was teamwork and cooperation. The kids had to work together to be successful. The second graders were also assessed on rhythm reading this week. They read 4 beat rhythm patterns by themselves using the rhythm syllables "ta" and "ti."
Third graders began the week by dancing to La Raspa. This dance is more commonly known as the Mexican Hat Dance. We began learning all about harmony, too! The students sang a song called "Remember Me" and learned a vocal ostinato to go along with it. An ostinato is a pattern that repeats- a vocal ostinato is an ostinato we sing. We then took this song and put it on the barred instruments. We accompanied it using a broken bordun, where students alternate hands between two notes. We will be practicing that a lot this year!
In fourth grade, the students got to play their recorders for the very first time! I will be posting videos on the blog soon to remind students how to play their recorders. Some things to remember are:
-left hand on top
-leaks cause squeaks
-say "du" into the recorder to create sound, don't blow into it
-B is played by covering the top hole on the front and the only hole in the back
We also began learning our song for the December DARE graduation!
Fifth graders also began playing our recorders this week. We began with a review of how to hold the recorder, how to breathe into it, and how to play the notes B, A, and G. We then had a discussion about scales. Scales are groups of notes that songs are based around. The three scales we talked about were Major, Minor, and Pentatonic. Ask your child what pitch begins each scale.
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