This week, the first graders learned a silly movement chant called "Hands, Hands." We warmed up our cold bodies by moving just one body part at a time. We also sang a winter song called "I Have a Little Snowman." It explores movement and pitch in a scale. As the song continues, the pitch of the song rises, and when the snowman melts the pitch returns back to the starting note (do). After we reviewed our solfege tones, we learned a fun song and game called "Doggie, Doggie." One student played the part of the dog who was sleeping in the middle of the room while another student distributed the bone to one person in the room as the class sang the song. Whoever had the bone on the phrase, "Who stole the bone?" got to sing the solo part of "I stole the bone!" It was so fun to see students guessing who they thought had the bone.
The second graders reviewed a musical term from last year: tempo. Tempo is the speed of a piece of music. We practiced listening and moving to various tempos with a song called "Freight Train." Students also had a chance to compose a "tempo story." The class chose a topic, then as each part of the story was added, students determined its tempo: adagio, andante, or allegro (slow, medium, or fast). Next week. they will "perform" the story on percussion instruments, following the changing tempos.
To prepare for their upcoming field trip, the third grade students had an exciting visit on Tuesday from four members of the Lexington Symphony Orchestra. Students got up close and personal with the violin, viola, clarinet, and tuba (or "TUUUUBAAAAA!"). The performers played beautiful music and taught us about their instruments. We discussed the four instrument families (string, brass, woodwind, and percussion), and learned a little bit about concert etiquette.
The fourth and fifth grade students started a new unit - chords! A chord (unlike a pitch or interval) is a group of three or more pitches played at the same time. There are MANY different chords in the music world, but we focused on chords with three or four notes. We explored the different tonalities that the chords can possess and a process for building a chord that will sound good every time! Once everyone knew how to build a chord, we used the classroom floor staff to learn how to notate and label them.
The fourth graders also learned a song for the New Year, "Auld Lang Syne" (a Scottish tune that is typically heard right after the ball drops in Times Square!). Next week, we will be adding a chordal accompaniment to the song using the tone chimes.
The fifth grade students plaed chords along with a fun song from the 80s by a Norwegian band called A-ha...Take on Me!
