RDS NOTES
Ravine Drive School Music Newsletter, November, 2015
Kicking Off The Year WIth Newspaper Dancing!
The Adventures of Peer Gynt!
2nd graders listened to the piece, "Morning Mood," by Edvard Grieg, where we learned about the oboe and the flute and colored listening glyphs to show elements of music that we heard in the piece. We discovered that this popular piece is sometimes played in cartoons on tv!
Pumpkins, pumpkins, everywhere!
Kindergarten students practiced their pitch skills by learning the song, "Pumpkin Fat," sang the song on "sol," and "mi" notes, and practiced a steady beat. Students sang the song and made funny jack o lantern faces. They were then given the opportunity to play the xylophone while the class sang. Our final activity was to compose rhythm songs for our parters. We had such a good time writing rhythms and performing them with our friends! You can even see pictures of our songs and us making funny jack o lantern faces hanging on the wall outside the music room!
Click the link below to hear Ms. Lenihan's Kindergarten class singing, "Pumpkin, Pumpkin."
http://www.mediafire.com/listen/i2amdadthaun1tc/2015_Pumpkin_Lenihan.m4a
1st grade students learned the difference between major and minor sounds in music with the song, "Pass the Pumpkin," a spooky sounding song in a minor key. We passed the pumpkin around and took turns playing the xylophones, the cymbals, and even the rain stick!
Steady, Freddy
1st graders learned the song, "Who's That Tapping At My Window," where they practiced a steady beat on the drum and the rhythm sticks and even sang alone for the class!
2nd graders learned the playground song and chant, "Down Down Baby" while practicing a steady beat, with foot and hand movements. They learned the difference between chanting and singing and had a lot of fun with this partner activity.
Music Journals!
1st Grade Memory Songs
We also learned to draw treble clefs and to write music! In our memory song, "Engine Engine", we sang and created trains that moved around the room. "Engine Engine" helped us to practice our "sol" and "mi" notes that we learned in Kindergarten. We did a great job clapping and writing the rhythms, singing and dictating the solfege and then writing the notes on the music staff for the first time!
2nd Grade Memory Songs
Our most current memory song, "Apple Tree" introduced us to our new note, "do". We learned the song by playing a game and keeping a steady beat on the xylophones. Once we had learned the song very well, we wrote the rhythms and solfege through dictation then we wrote the notation on the music staff! 2nd graders are getting very good at writing music. Just take a look at these examples!
Listen to Mrs. Sullam's and Mrs. Donovan's 2nd grade music classes singing and playing the game, "Apple Tree" while keeping a steady beat on the xylophones. Just click the links below!
Mrs. Sullam's Class:
http://www.mediafire.com/listen/yaocesba3xyoqz3/2015_Sullam_Apple_Tree.m4a
Mrs. Donovan's Class:
http://www.mediafire.com/listen/uo2jfqs8ivb7rrt/2015_Apple_Tree_Donovan.m4a
Kindergarten Is Rhythm Ready!
Loud and soft and 4 voices
Click the link below to hear Mrs. Murray's, 2nd grade class narrating and practicing their headvoice with the warmup, "On A Dark And Stormy Night."
http://www.mediafire.com/listen/fmcocsx4nex9xkx/2015_Murray_Warmups_Isabella_2.m4a
Kindergarten students have been learning the concepts of loud and soft in music, with two versions of "If You're Happy and You Know It." We also practiced using our 4 voices correctly, "speaking", "shouting", "singing" and "whisper". We practiced rhythms on rhythm sticks by tapping our names and counting the syllables. We also sang the song, "Jump In Jump Out" while we played rhythm sticks and had fun spinning the spinner to decide how we would perform our names while we played.
Kindergarteners are finishing up a unit on loud and soft by learning the song, "5 Fat Turkeys Are We" and playing the hide the turkey game while showing where the turkey is hiding by manipulating their voices loud and soft. This has been a favorite!
2nd Grade skip, step, and repeat
Surprise Surprise!
Kindergarten students also had fun being a conductor while the class performed on instruments. 3 groups of students played xylophones and rhythm instruments while the "conductor" stepped into the hula hoop assigned to the instrument group of their choice. It was fun stepping into two hula hoops at the same time and some very creative students even tried to step into all three at once! But be careful! If the conductor isn't standing in your hoop, don't get caught playing!