This week (8/31-9/4)

Happy Friday!

This week in....

Kindergarten- we learned to sing the song that will begin every music class called "Hello, Everybody." We got to bounce Lola and Izzy (two adorable stuffed ducks) to the steady beat to match with a poem. We also learned to play rhythm sticks along with a duck quacking song. We also figured out how to say and play our names on the rhythm sticks. It was a great second week!

1st grade- we played a longer game with the "Rig a Jig Jig" song that we started learning last week. In this game, each set of partners got to create their own steady beat movements to go with the song. We then performed them for the class! We have also started being detectives- our job is to listen to each piece of music Ms. Buckley plays and decide whether or not is has a steady beat. We are pretty good at it!

2nd grade- we are doing lots of hammering in music class! We learned a fun song called "Johnny Hammers"- ask your child to share it with you! We also got to explore steady beat and rhythm with the song "Hammer Ring" by hitting mallets on the floor. We reviewed our old friends la, so, and mi from pitch hill. We also got to draw rhythms on construction paper to use in a fun rhythm clapping game.

3rd grade- we are still in the land of machines! We got to move like machines as a class this week. We noticed that most of these movements showed a steady beat and were repetitive. We challenged ourselves by doing the "Zackody, Kody" name game at 80 beats per minute with a metronome. We also began learning the song "Willowbee", which allows students to travel down an "alley" with their partner while doing a made up dance move.

4th grade- we got really good at telling the difference between steady beat and rhythm this week. We also can tell the difference between straight and swung eighth notes. We used the old poem "Bubblegum, bubblegum in a dish. How many pieces do you wish?" to make a game out of it. We even made a mini-performance using this poem and some rhythmic improvisations at the end of class.

5th grade- we created compositions in groups of 4 using our first names. We are performing them using our voices and hand drums. We had to work together to be able to say our piece twice in a row without stopping, while also adding in up and down strokes on the drums.