This week (2/8-2/12)

Sorry for the break since my last update. January totally ran away with me! I spent a few days down in Colorado Springs as well for the Colorado Music Educators Conference, where I learned lots of fun new things to incorporate into the rest of the school year. :)

This week in...

Kindergarten- we helped Ms. Buckley solve the mystery of who delivered the secret valentine! We played a passing game with the song "Messenger" and tapped heart charts and played rhythm sticks to match the steady beat. We also learned that a steady beat can be fast or slow.

1st grade- we have begun our new food unit! We learned a fun poem:

Two little sausages frying in a pan
One went sizzle and the other went BAM!

We learned to speak this poem, added movements, and then composed B sections with a partner. The rhythms we created used "bam" (quarter notes), "sizzle" (eighth notes), and rests. We got to share our patterns with the class by speaking and clapping.

2nd grade- we learned a fun Valentine's day dance called "Heel Toe." Ask your 2nd grader to show you and see the fun video below!

3rd grade- we have been learning the Japanese folk song "Sakura" to go with our tree theme for our upcoming 3rd grade music concert! The concert will be Wednesday, March 9th at 6:00pm. Students should arrive to their classroom by 5:30pm to line up and prepare to take the stage. We can't wait to share this music with you!

4th grade- we have had lots of fun lately playing a competition style game with the song "Old House." For this game, we pass around a bag filled with jenga blocks while we sing the song. Whoever is holding the bag at the end of the song must draw out 1 jenga block, then speak and clap the rhythm that is written on it. The person who drew the block then adds the block to a structure the group is building in the middle with the blocks. The group with the tallest structure when the timer goes off wins! 

5th grade- we just finished our fantastic composition unit, for which we used the book "The Tree of Life" as inspiration. Students created original pieces of music in groups of 5 or 6 based on part of the book. Last week students performed these pieces for each other, and also graded each other's performances using a rubric we created as a class. Each performance was video recorded so that Ms. Buckley could watch them multiple times later and write down her own comments for each group. Students also completed self-evaluations where they wrote about how this project went for them and scored themselves on their effort, teamwork, and musicianship. The group with the highest score from each class will perform their piece at our concert on Wednesday, May 18!