Weekly Review 10/30 - 11/3

For those who celebrate, we hope you had a wonderful and safe Halloween!

This week, the first graders learned another song about bats called "Flap and Fly." Once they knew the song, we played a game to accompany it. Bats are nocturnal mammals, meaning that they sleep in the daytime and are awake at night.  We started the game with the lights on, then a student (the Sun) turned off the lights so the bats could dance and sing!  When the sun came up, the lights were turned back on and the bats fell asleep.  The students even decorated their own bats to use during the game.  The first graders also learned two more fun songs, called "Skin and Bones" and "Ghost of John."

The second grade students read a book called "Old Wind." Then, they used various percussion instruments (as well as their voices!) as sound effects.  It was so much fun to add the instruments and vocal sounds to make the book sound even cooler!  We recorded the students' performances, and uploaded them to THIS blog post.  For their second music class, the students learned a song called "Bony Legs." It is part of a Russian folk story and was so much fun to sing!

The third graders learned a passing game called "Pass the Broomstick."  They started by singing the song (in minor tonality), then learned how to pass a rhythm stick along to the steady beat.  On the last beat of the song, whoever has the red stick is out!  Friends who were eliminated were able to play the egg shakers with the beat and sing along.

Fourth graders have finished preparing for the Veteran's Day Assembly.  The assembly is this Monday, November 6th at 1:30 p.m.  Due to space limitations, ONLY the parents of fourth graders may attend.  Thank you!

The fifth graders learned a great rhythm game called "Rhythm Spots." Four different colors were assigned to a different rhythmic value (blue = quarter rest, green = quarter note, yellow = eighth note, red = sixteenth note).  We then had students walk along to the steady beat while listening to "In the Hall of the Mountain King," and when they got to a spot they had to perform four beats of that rhythm before walking away to a different spot.  The tempo steadily increases in that piece of music, so they had to listen carefully to keep up with the beat!

The fifth graders also learned about African drumming.  We taught them a drumming pattern from the Ewe, a group of people in Ghana and a few other African countries.  The Ewe people use vocalizations for drumming, where the voice imitates the sounds of the drum.  These vocal syllables are their form of spoken notation, since music is not written down like it is in other parts of the world.

Once they learned the drumming pattern, we practiced it on our classroom jug drums and tubanos while we sang "Sing Noel."

Have a wonderful weekend!