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.