Weekly Review 4/7-4/11

We are so happy that the sun is finally out and Spring is here!

First grade students learned about the Percussion Family.  To produce a sound on a percussion instrument you need to strike it, shake it, or scrape it.  Each student had the chance to play a few of these instruments. By the end of next week, each student will have played all of these percussion instruments.

• Egg Shaker
• Maraca
• Claves
• Rhythm Sticks
• Wrist Bells
• Sleigh Bells
• Wood Block
• Cow Bell
• Agogo Bells
• Guiro
• Cymbals
• Finger Cymbals
• Triangle
• Ratchet
• Cabasa
• Vibraslap
• Hand Drum
• Bongos

Second graders continued to play Instrument Bingo, since we had so much fun last week! This time, students were challenged to remember all of the instrument sounds heard to fill in their bingo boards.  Some were simple (violin, trumpet, bass drum, etc), and others were quite tricky! (vibraphone, shamisen, metronome, etc.)  A few of the students won prizes to take home!

The second grade students also played a song called "Spring Delight."  It is a game that reinforces rhythmic identification using quarter notes and eighth notes (du and du-de). Three baskets with three different rhythmic patterns were put into the middle of the circle.  Students passed around a spring basket filled with colorful eggs to the beat of the song.  Whoever has the basket on the last word of the song was the lucky winner who got a chance to open up one of the eggs. Inside each egg were two special things- a fun little sticker and a word that relates to the spring season. The lucky student got to keep the sticker but had to figure out which rhythmic egg basket their "special word" belonged too.  It was so much fun to see which rhythmic basket had the most eggs!

In third grade, we reviewed the challenging measures in "Old Mac Donald" and learned how to finger and play the F#. One way to remember how to play the F# is to finger the low note D and take out the right hand pointer finger. We also continued with the centers. Don't forget that Mrs. Rzasa and I are available before school to help students.

Fifth grade students will be performing "Where the Wild Things Are" to some of our kindergarten and first grade friends on Monday and Tuesday. Our fourth grade students will be performing their musical version "Jabuti" to each other. They have worked very hard on their compositions.

In chorus, the fourth and fifth grade students worked on the ending of Oceanus, learned the rest of Reflections of a Lad at Sea, and went over individual grade level songs. Don't forget that our concert is just a few weeks away- MAY 15th!

We hope you are all enjoying the beautiful weekend! Hopefully the weather will continue to stay this nice!