I'm writing a little earlier this week because I will be out for the next two days at the Illinois Music Educator Conference. I hate being away from the kiddos but love getting to learn about lots of great new lessons and techniques being used around the state that I can bring back to Urbana. I actually just taught a Kindergarten lesson today that was directly inspired by a session I attended 2 years ago. Students in either Ms. Howrey or Mrs. Jones' classes should be able to tell you about Mortimer and how he would sing instead of going to sleep. :-)
Other Kindergarten activities this week have included the introduction of our final nursery rhyme, Little Miss Muffet, and a new song-experience-game, The Farmer in the Dell. In fact, right now in 3 of your houses, there is a current Farmer just waiting for his/her turn to find a wife when we play again. It might be your kid!
2nd graders have continued to explore the Blues and more specifically the 12 Bar Blues pattern. We tied this pattern to our study of the Treble Clef where we had talked about Freddie the Frog and Treble Clef Island. The basic 12 Bar Blues pattern that we talked about is C,C,C,C,F,F,C,C,G,F,C,C. For our purposes, the Cs are Crater Island, the Fs are Freddie's Vacation Home, and the Gs are the slimy Geckos. I had them remember the pattern by talking about how Crater Island was home, we go visit Freddie and like it so much that we stay an extra day, come back home, check out the Geckos but don't like it there, go back to Freddie's and finally end up at home again. We also turned our bodies into the 12 bar blues by patting on our legs for C, our shoulders for F, and our heads for G, Today, we took all of this knowledge and actually PLAYED the 12 Bar Blues as a class using Boomwhackers. It was awesome!
Finally, 4th graders are plugging away on their performance pieces. They will once again have the opportunity to bring them home to practice over the weekend. They could really use some time working on these songs. So, ask your kiddo if they have their recorder, and maybe even get brave and let them play parts of their songs for you. The encouragement could help a lot!
Have a great rest of your week and a lovely weekend. :-)
Other Kindergarten activities this week have included the introduction of our final nursery rhyme, Little Miss Muffet, and a new song-experience-game, The Farmer in the Dell. In fact, right now in 3 of your houses, there is a current Farmer just waiting for his/her turn to find a wife when we play again. It might be your kid!
2nd graders have continued to explore the Blues and more specifically the 12 Bar Blues pattern. We tied this pattern to our study of the Treble Clef where we had talked about Freddie the Frog and Treble Clef Island. The basic 12 Bar Blues pattern that we talked about is C,C,C,C,F,F,C,C,G,F,C,C. For our purposes, the Cs are Crater Island, the Fs are Freddie's Vacation Home, and the Gs are the slimy Geckos. I had them remember the pattern by talking about how Crater Island was home, we go visit Freddie and like it so much that we stay an extra day, come back home, check out the Geckos but don't like it there, go back to Freddie's and finally end up at home again. We also turned our bodies into the 12 bar blues by patting on our legs for C, our shoulders for F, and our heads for G, Today, we took all of this knowledge and actually PLAYED the 12 Bar Blues as a class using Boomwhackers. It was awesome!
Finally, 4th graders are plugging away on their performance pieces. They will once again have the opportunity to bring them home to practice over the weekend. They could really use some time working on these songs. So, ask your kiddo if they have their recorder, and maybe even get brave and let them play parts of their songs for you. The encouragement could help a lot!
Have a great rest of your week and a lovely weekend. :-)