Happy Thanksgiving! Time flies by and all the more so around breaks and holidays. Before you travel for the holiday here is an update of what we have been learning in music class!
Red Room: We built on our knowledge of slow and fast tempo by exploring it further in the piece "In the Hall of the Mountain King". Students tapped along the main theme pattern and identified short and long notes that they remembered are called ti-ti and ta. We used our rhythms and the tempo to decide what motions best fit the song- from tiptoeing to stomping and even racing! Movement will continue to be a focus as we explore other kinds of music and the instruments behind the sounds.
Orange Room: We have finished learning an entire octave of notes on the Treble Staff! From Middle C, "Do", to High C, "Do", and we can tell you what specific line or space it lives on. Currently, students are leaning a progression of songs made up of two parts- a melody and a Boomwhacker action. We learn each part before putting it together, challenging our singing and coordination at the same time! Students have enjoyed learning different action games to remember rhythms and notes.
Yellow Room: We have continued to learn songs through singing and Boomwhackers. Currently we are learning "On Top of Spaghetti" and how to feel rhythms in a meter of three. Additionally we have begun to study the different instrument families. Particularly looking at how they make sound, how they are made, and what ties them together as a family. We have enjoyed videos of BBC orchestras, Canadian Brass, and the Wheaton College Percussion Ensemble, to name a few!
Green Room: We have skyrocketed into our music note reading and have launched into several new songs! Most recently students worked in small groups to demonstrate clear rhythm, accurate note reading and, most importantly, keeping in time together as a group. They had great performances this week showing their hard work playing songs such as "Go Tell Aunt Rhody", and "Lucy Locket". Students greatly enjoyed watching performances of The Havard Undergraduate Drummers (or THUD) on boomwhackers!
Turquoise Room: We took a break from boomwhackers as we studied a unit on Beethoven and his famous Symphony No. 5. Students learned about a motif (a short musical idea) and recreated Beethoven's famous motif as their own on pitched percussion instruments. We learned how to conduct a group of musicians and saw how important it is to watch- as you never know when you'll go faster or reeeeeally slow!
Blue Room: We finished a short unit on musical scores. During this unit students learned about the musical form A-B-A, how a Coda works, and reviewed variations of our 16th note rhythms. We enjoyed creating new ways to play rhythms and show off our dynamic abilities! The unit ended with a comparison of three arrangements of our focus piece, In the Hall of the Mountain King by Edvard Grieg, and analyzed the tempo, dynamics, and instrument sounds (timbre) that we heard in each. Currently we are learning about chords and how we can build patterns to support a melody.