music update

Tomowrrow we begin our third week of music classes, delving deeper into instruction. These last two weeks have been spent teaching students how to conduct themselves in music class, and the expectations for listening to music. Students have been learning to distinguish between high notes and low notes, reenforcing the concept by sining sirens while moving their hands up and down with the pitch.

In Kindergarten we have continued to listen to the "Carnival of the Animals" and talked about how some music is fast and some is slow. We modeled this idea by singing a song at a moderate tempo, then singing the song again very slowly, after which, of course, we sped up really fast. This led into a discussion of beats where I intorduced students to the quarter note which gets on beat. Next week we will learn about half notes getting two beats!

In First Grade, my theory lesson was pushed back to this week because of the half days so your studens will learn about half and quarter notes together discussing the differences, visually and aurally between the two (aurally being one gets one beat, the other gets two beats). We were able to finish our unit on Peter and the Wolf listening to the themes of Peter, the Little bird, the duck, Grandpa, the Wolf, and the hunters. Students discussed differences they heard between each chracter, and how the music portrayed the characters. some students described the little bird as being 'light' in sound while the duck was 'low' or 'deep'. They learned to describe music as fast or slow. This week students will begin a study of Boroque music beginning with J.S. Bach.