Weekly Review 3/31 - 4/4

This week, the first grade students explored music through movement by dancing along to In the Hall of the Mountain King.  This popular piece, by Edvard Grieg, starts at a slow tempo and gradually gets faster.  The simple movements (similar to "Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes") seem easy at first, but becomes complicated as the tempo changes!  They also finished their Peter and the Wolf books!  Please visit this post for more information.

The second graders completed the Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra interactive activity.  Many of the students were asking for the link so that they could play at home.  The game is offered through the Carnegie Hall Kids website!

To test the students' knowledge of the instruments in the orchestra, we played Instrument Bingo!  Recordings of each instrument were played, so that the students could identify that instrument and check to see if it was on their bingo card.  Prizes were given to students who successfully identified five instruments in a straight line on their board!  Next week, we will play again so that more students have the opportunity to be winners!

The third graders enjoyed their centers and testing day early in the week.  For the second music class, they all learned how to read the new note D.  This helped the students who are working on learning their purple belt song, "Old MacDonald."  We also reviewed the rhythms and reminded the students to play on a steady even beat - even during the repeated notes!  It was fun to improvise melodies with the third grade students as well. Mrs. Niu or I would play a four beat question on the recorder, and asked different students to improvise an answer, ending on the tonic (in this case, a G).

The fourth and fifth graders continued to work on their group composition projects:  "Jabuti" and "Where the Wild Things Are," respectively.  Next week we will try to wrap things up, and see if we can record a video of the performances!  

During chorus, most of the classes finished learning our fourth (and last) song - "Reflections of a Lad at Sea."  We are so excited to start adding extra parts such as solos, speakers, instruments, and dancing! Don't forget - our concert is May 15th!!