We had some fun times last week in music class after our "Little Red Hen" performances! Friday classes enjoyed the nice weather by playing our "Charlie Over the Ocean" game/song outside. We added our featured instrument, the ukulele, after students were taught one of the chords in the song. (pictured above)
We also watched a fantastic performance given by Footnotes, the show choir of CCHS. Some of our students even got to participate! (pictured above)
0 Comments
Today Miss Frye and I combined classes and co-taught to reinforce an important part of the 1st grade Science curriculum and how it relates to music - sound waves and vibration.
We began our lesson recalling what we know about sound and vibration. Students then felt their own vocal chords vibrate as we sang in a high voice and low voice. Showing that sound creates vibration, we did a demonstration by taping a piece of paper to the stereo, then watching it vibrate with the music. We then divided into rotating groups. Miss Frye's group used a tube to hear how sound travels. My group used the bass xylophone to feel how an instrument vibrates as it gets played, where the vibration is strongest, and what happens to the vibration if something interferes. Showing that vibration makes sounds, we talked about the different instrument families. Percussion vibrates by being struck or shook. We demonstrated this with the gong, vibra-slap, and thunder tube. Strings need to vibrate to make a stringed instrument sound. We demonstrated this with children's guitars. Woodwinds and Brass vibrate with a combination of air, embouchure, and / or reeds. We demonstrated this with bassoon reeds. Miss Frye ended the lesson by showing students a 'guitar' that she made out of rubber bands and kleenex boxes. She also reminded students that they can make an instrument out of almost anything as long as it can vibrate! First Grade students performed our mini-musical "The Little Red Hen" by Donna Dirkson this week. During 1st Grade music classes, at least one Kindergarten class and sometimes a pre-school class came to be our audience. We didn't stage our musical, but every 1st Grader had a speaking part, an instrument, and sang all of the songs. They did a fantastic job! (pictured above)
Last week was our final week for the entire class to use xylophones and glockenspiels. One of the learning standards for music includes improvisation. We improvised on our pitched percussion instruments each day we played. Below are samples from a few of our first grade classes…. Besides xylophones and glockenspiels, we worked a lot on our mini-musical "The Little Red Hen." Mrs. Rhodes'/Mrs. Phillips' class: Mrs. Stewart's class: Mrs. Vigna's class: Mrs. Wilkinson's (Mr. Shaffern's) class:
With so much going on at this time of year, I've had a difficult time updating this site!
Since the last update, we prepared for our assembly with Jim Gill by listening to "A Soup Opera" (pictured above). Also pictured above are photos from the actual assembly. First graders played the bongos along with Latin music (pictured above). For Easter we listened to "Easter Parade" while following along with the book. We also did a musical egg shaker hunt in the music room using our ears to help us find the eggs (pictured above). We worked on playing a rhythm chart and continued to work on notation. The high school jazz band performed for us (pictured above). We began our unit on xylophone and glockenspiels (pictured above). Other featured instruments have included the tuba and steel drum (pictured above). As for singing, we learned the movement song "Ricka Bamboo." We started learning music for our mini-musical "Little Red Hen" we will perform for Kindergarten this month. And we had a sing-off assembly with Kindergarten alternating our concert songs. |