This week (10-21-10/23)

What a whirlwind week!

This week in...

Kindergarten- we practiced moving our voices up and down like flying ghosts! Spooky! We even got to draw our own ghost pathways and practice moving our voices with our pathway. We also read the story "Five Little Pumpkins" and got to have solos for some of the speaking parts in the story. We ended class with a movement game where Ms. Buckley holds up an orange, black, or white paper. Each color paper represented a different halloween character. For example, whenever Ms. Buckley held up the white paper, we moved like ghosts around the music room.

1st grade- we are working more on "leaf rhythms" where we speak and clap along with different colored leaves. For example, for "red leaf" we clap twice. For "yellow leaf" we clap three times. We are learning that matching the words in music is called RHYTHM. We are making up our own leaf rhythms with partners and in small groups, and even learning to play these new rhythms on percussion instruments like drums, shakers, and wood blocks.

2nd grade- we have started our preparations for the winter concert, which will be Wednesday, December 9 at 6:30pm! We will be performing a piece called "Old Saint Nick", which is adapted from the poem we have been working on, "Old King Cole." We are not only performing the poem, but also creating fun question and answers rhythms with our voices and on percussion instruments. It's going to be a great show!

3rd grade- we have begun the difficult but fun work of exploring the difference between duple and triple meter in music. Duple is the meter we are all most familiar and comfortable with. Triple meter feels really different! For duple meter, there are 2 beats in each measure, whereas triple meter has 3 beats per measure. We used a Halloween poem called "Old Mrs. Witch" to speak and move to these different time signatures. We worked with partners to create movements that would the STRONG beats for duple and triple.

4th grade- we reviewed the song and instrument parts for "I've Got to Rise." We then got with a partner and composed a B section using rhythms taken from the song. See photo below.

After composing our rhythms, we got to add body percussion (stomps, pats, claps, snaps, etc) to go with it. We then performed and shared our compositions with the class, singing the song in between each group as a transition.

5th grade- we learned a short excerpt from Shakespeare's MacBeth that goes:
Double, double
Toil and trouble
Fire burn and
Cauldron bubble

We explored speaking this text at 3 speeds- fast, medium, and slow- all along with a pat/clap ostinato pattern, We tried a challenge where we had to pass the poem around the circle- it was really tough! We also learned a song with these words and sang it in canon.

Talent show next week!!!!! Wednesday, October 28 5:30pm!