January in the music room

Kindergarten

Kindergarteners expanded their concept of high and low pitches from singing to body movements to visual representations. First through line drawings on whiteboards, then through the use of plastic chips on grids. Eventually, they will use graphic notation to represent pitch. This process guides them to learning to read, and ultimately write, musical notation. Along the way we also discussed how pitch can express mood and experimented with different instrument choices to see how these choices can change the mood of a song.

2nd grade

2nd graders completed the first phase of learning the songs for their upcoming concert: “Oceans of Fun.” Now that we’ve covered the basics of lyrics and melody, we can tackle the more interesting challenge of ensuring that our singing is expressive and that everyone’s voice is heard as part of the larger group. We also added speaking parts to the show in December. January’s challenge will be to pull it all together for the concert on February 3rd!

4th grade

4th graders have been hard at work preparing for their concert this month. One activity involved brainstorming strategies to facilitate how they can learn many stanzas of lyrics. These strategies are relevant to any subject, whether one is memorizing words to a song, historical facts for social studies, or parts of an organism for a science class. Students have also been introduced to some of the more technical aspects of singing, such as singing on vowels rather than consonants, and using the shape of their mouth to create a more resonant sound. We are getting eager to put on the show on January 21st!