This week in...
Kindergarten- we explore the musical opposites of loud and quiet using body movements, voices, and instruments! We made lists of loud and quiet things, like animals, body sounds, things outside, things at home, etc. Here's some of the things students came up with...
Loud:
Lion
Stomping
Alarm clock
Washing machine
Thunder
Car horn
Shouting
Quiet:
Mouse
Whisper
Ticking clock
Breeze
Tip toe
Humming
We practiced acting out each of these things along with a piece of music that switches between loud and quiet. We learned a game called "Grizzly Bear" that starts out quiet and gets LOUD at the end!
1st grade and 2nd grade- I don't want to give too much away, because we are very near to our winter concert! The concert will be
Wednesday, December 9th at 5:30 (1st grade) and 6:30 (2nd grade.) Students must be in their classroom 15 minutes before their concert begins to line up with classmates. I'm so excited to share with you what we have been working on!
3rd grade- this week was our show and tell of our found sound instruments! We shared with our classmates, and then enjoyed a fun presentation to wrap up this fun unit. For the presentation, our guests from the Denver Playground Ensemble came to see what the students created. We all got our instruments out in the auditorium and had fun experimenting with different ways to combine voice and instrument sounds in response to gestures made by a conductor. It was so much fun! See some photos below of the instruments we made. :)
4th grade- we have been groove walking and swing dancing to some swing music this week! It wore us out (or at least it wore me out!) and was so much fun. We are continuing to work on our music literacy by reading the notes B, A, G, and E on the treble clef staff. We also began learning a new song that we will perform at our concert in April called "All Jazzed Up." We then took that upbeat swing song and tried to turn it into a blues piece for our recorders by making it slower, more sad, and quieter.
5th grade- we have been enjoying some fun drumming circles this week. We have learned several drum parts that we can play along with certain pop songs from the radio. This week, we played some 4-beat question and answer rhythms (class plays question, individual student improvises an answer) and our "what's for lunch? pepperoni pizza" rhythms with the song "Ghost" by Ella Henderson. We were groovin'! We also learned about complementary rhythms. This is when two rhythms fit together by filling in the empty spaces of one another, which creates a groove that you can repeat over and over.
