Valentine's Day

The week of Valentine's Day is one of my favorite weeks to be a music teacher!  We do so many fun activities about love, hearts, and friendship. 

Kindergarten learned two very important words this week: beat and rhythm.  We learned that a steady beat stays the same while rhythm changes constantly and corresponds to the number of syllables in a word.  We used big and little hearts to show the difference between beats and rhythms on the board.  Here we are doing a dance where we clap the rhythm of numbers and then spin around with our partners.

First graders had an exciting time learning where to place so and mi on their very own staff.  Each student was given a staff and dots and had to "write" the melody I sang.  They did a really great job!  We then learned a cute, simple Valentine's Day song and a silly poem.

The second graders had a real treat this week.  We pulled out the Active Expression devices to take a quiz.  These are little remote controls that allow students to answer questions on their own by choosing a multiple choice answer on their device.  We also learned a very fun Valentine dance where we focused on being partners with everyone in our classroom, not just those people we consider our best friends.  This is such a valuable lesson for all students- we must be able to work with everyone!

In third grade this week, the students learned a new note: low la.  We learned that this is the pitch that is the resting tone for songs in a minor key.  The students will  practice singing, reading, and notating this pitch over the next few weeks.  We also sang a Valentine song using our new rhythm, ti-ka-ti-ka.  Third graders are also working on movement improvisation, so we took a few moments to practice making our bodies into the shapes of letters and random shapes.  We will continue to work on this for several weeks as well.  Here is one of the third grade classes dancing to "Love Will Keep us Together."

Fourth graders had a quick discussion about our field trip last week.  We went to the symphony and talked about the different songs we heard and instruments we saw.  The children really enjoyed themselves and I am so glad this is an opportunity we can offer to the students each year.  Many of them may not see a live symphony orchestra again, so I am glad to give them this experience.  After our discussion, we danced to "Love Will Keep us Together."  The first part of each section is a following game.  Each group must follow their leader until the refrain begins.  We also created a song about exercising in rondo form.  Ask your student what that means- hopefully they can explain it quite well! 

Fifth graders were challenged greatly this week!  We have been talking about mixed and unusual meters, where we take music that has groups of 2 beats and 3 beats and combine them.  This week our song was "All You Need is Love" by The Beatles.  We played a lummi stick game with the song.  This class is in the midst of learning the moves, so the performance has not been perfected yet!  It is really difficult to move to a song that has groupings of 7 beats, and they are doing a great job.  I am also posting a video of an activity we did last week with drums and barred instruments.