Kindergarten- we made alphabet soup! We played with letter sounds and shapes, we stomped and moved to "Chicka Chicka Boom Boom", and learned a poem:
ABC's and vegetable goop
What will we find in the alphabet soup?
We learned a fun team game that goes with this poem.
1st grade- we reviewed our new song "Snowflakes" by placing snowflake symbols on the white board to match the song (snowflakes go up high for the note "so" and down low for the note "mi.) We labeled the rhythms in the song with quarter notes and eighth notes. We then played the steady beat with the song on maracas, and the rhythm of the song on rhythm sticks. Challenging but fun!
2nd grade- we learned a new song called "Apple Tree." This song helped us to learn a new note from pitch hill, "do." We played a fun elimination game with this song- whoever has the apple bean bag on the last word of the song is out! Funnily enough, the last word of the song is actually the word "out!" When someone gets out, they echo a singing pattern after Ms. Buckley using the notes la, so, mi, and do. Then, that person grabs rhythm sticks and plays along on the steady beat for the rest of the game.
3rd grade- we reviewed how to play "Willow Tree" on xylophones- challenging piece! We then learned a new xylo part to go with the song "Banyan Tree." This helped us learn to play instruments parts in triple meter (3 beats per measure instead of the more typical 4 beats per measure.) We tried playing drums and sticks to go with the song, drums on beat 1 and sticks on beats 2 and 3. It sounded like this: boom chick chick, boom chick chick, boom chick chick, boom chick chick.
4th grade- we are continuing to prepare way in advance for our 4th grade music concert in April. We reviewed the African call and response song "Kye Kye Kule", pronounced "Chay Chay Koo Lay." We are going to include this in our concert because jazz music originally goes all the way back to Africa pre-dating slavery. Now, we are starting to work on our next piece "Hammer Ring." This song has many version, and we will share two of them (a simple one and jazzier updated one) at our concert.
5th grade- last week, we read the story The Tree of Life. This story is filled with different animals and parts of the tree's life cycle that make excellent inspiration for original pieces of music. Each group is hard at work creating their own piece using whatever instruments, voices, or other sounds they wish. It's going to be so fun to hear the final results in a couple weeks!
