Weekly Review 10/15- 10/19

In music this week, all of our students experienced playing at least one Orff instrument.  Carl Orff believed that, "A successful and fun experience is the basis for a positive learning process." Thus, he
designed a learning approach which uses tone bar instruments. These instruments include the bass, alto and soprano xylophones, metallophones, and soprano and alto glockenspiels. The students learned the difference between a xylophone, metallophone, and a glockenspiel. They also learned the mallets that are appropriate for each of these instruments and how to hold the mallets properly. Here is a picture of how our music classroom was set up with our third grade students:

The first grade students learned a song called, "5 Little Pumpkins" that introduced music contour, or the direction the notes moves in. Some of the students played one of the Orff instruments. Can you guess which one? Our first graders learned a new music term called, "crescendo" and applied it to a fun song called, "Thump, Thump, Thump!" Students got a chance to either play an egg shaker, a hand drum, or a triangle to accompany the song.

Second grade students continued "Bony Legs" and used a guiro and xylophone to accompany the song.  They also learned a cute song called, "The Funny Little Lady." After the students successfully learned the song, they played a game where one student closed their eyes and sat in front of an imaginary door. Their job was to guess who the soloist was when a particular part of the song was sung. It was such a fun game that we will have to finish this game next week! They also created their own class brew by adding their own silly ingredient and sang, "Witches' Brew." These second graders are so creative!

In third grade, students had so much fun with, "9 Lives" last week that we continued to use the Orff instruments to accompany the song. Every child experienced playing a xylophone, metallophone, and a glockenspiel. They also played 5 notes ascending, beginning with the note D.  We also sung the scale in minor.

In fourth grade, the students got a very thorough lesson on how to play the Orff instruments and how to properly hold the mallets. They practiced playing an Orff instrument with the song, "Sounds of the Night Air." In chorus, we revisited the song "It's a Candy Cane Kind of Christmas." The students remembered so much of this song and sang it very well! We also continued to learn "The Christmas Song." For such a hard choral song with many chromatic passages, the students did a fabulous job!

The fifth graders continued to learn the xylophone accompaniment to the song, "Halloween Night."  In chorus we worked on "Food Glorious Food" and revisited "Hot Chocolate." The concert is coming up in December so please remind your child that all the music and lyric is now posted in the "Chorus" tab. We can't wait for you to see and hear the songs that they have be working on!