We have had such an exciting start to the year in the world of Point Road music! Here is some insight into some of the things we've been working on throughout the month of September. Stay tuned for more pictures and videos of your children working hard and exploring their musicianship skills. :-)
Kindergarten: after learning the procedures of how music class starts each day, we learned to sit in puppet position and met a new friend, Octi, the Octopus! Octi taught the Kindergarteners how to sing our "Hello" song, as well as how to practice solo singing! Each week we have a new "sing-y singster" who leads the class in solo singing, but for the first week that was Octi's job :-)
Kindergarten: after learning the procedures of how music class starts each day, we learned to sit in puppet position and met a new friend, Octi, the Octopus! Octi taught the Kindergarteners how to sing our "Hello" song, as well as how to practice solo singing! Each week we have a new "sing-y singster" who leads the class in solo singing, but for the first week that was Octi's job :-)
Kindergarten students are also learning about objects in the world that have a beat (drum, clock, train, ball, heart, etc.) and things that don't have a beat (running water, fireworks, wind, etc.). Now we are learning to find the beat in "The Imperial March" from Star Wars, and learned a game to play to keep the beat while listening to that song!
First Grade: First graders had an excitingly LOUD start to the school year by participating in an instrument circle! We played all the instruments in my classroom and made a mental note of our favorite one! During Enrichment, we began composing our first song. It is a steady beat song that we wrote with a partner, each person playing their part on their favorite instrument. During regular music class, we are continuing to apply the concept of steady beat by tossing bean bags to a partner on the beat, participating in a Zombie Walk, and a game called Bouncy, Bouncy, where we listen to a song, bounce our bodies to the beat, then Mrs. Baptist turns off the music for 10 seconds, but the students have to keep bouncing!! Then I turn the music back on and we see how many of us were able to keep that beat!
Second Grade: Second graders have been working so hard on their independent musicianship skills by performing in rounds of 2, 3, and 4 parts! We are also working in groups on an activity for one of our round pieces, My Little Race Car. The children assigned themselves to specific lines of the chant, chose instruments to represent their parts, and then transferred the rhythm of the words to the timbre of the instruments. Stay tuned for those projects!
First Grade: First graders had an excitingly LOUD start to the school year by participating in an instrument circle! We played all the instruments in my classroom and made a mental note of our favorite one! During Enrichment, we began composing our first song. It is a steady beat song that we wrote with a partner, each person playing their part on their favorite instrument. During regular music class, we are continuing to apply the concept of steady beat by tossing bean bags to a partner on the beat, participating in a Zombie Walk, and a game called Bouncy, Bouncy, where we listen to a song, bounce our bodies to the beat, then Mrs. Baptist turns off the music for 10 seconds, but the students have to keep bouncing!! Then I turn the music back on and we see how many of us were able to keep that beat!
Second Grade: Second graders have been working so hard on their independent musicianship skills by performing in rounds of 2, 3, and 4 parts! We are also working in groups on an activity for one of our round pieces, My Little Race Car. The children assigned themselves to specific lines of the chant, chose instruments to represent their parts, and then transferred the rhythm of the words to the timbre of the instruments. Stay tuned for those projects!
Third Grade: Third graders are spending the next 4 weeks learning about "ancient" styles of music: Baroque, Classical, Romantic, and Impressionist. We are creating lists of key words, composers, and characteristics of each of those musical eras at the end of each lesson. Then on the fifth week, students will be finding people in their class who have a common interest in one of those styles, and they will be creating a RAP (modern music) to tell us about the old style of music they chose! They will be creating exciting hip hop beats on Quaver as background music to support their rap! I can't wait to see what they come up with!
Fourth Grade: Because last year was such a hit, I will be bringing back the rock and roll unit starting next week in music! We will start with the Blues, work our way through Big Band and Doo Wop, and then finish with a variety of rock and roll subgenres. The culmination of this unit will be student presentations on a musician or band from the rock and roll timeline. My favorite part is watching the kids share everything they learned and listening to the song that they liked the most.
Fourth Grade: Because last year was such a hit, I will be bringing back the rock and roll unit starting next week in music! We will start with the Blues, work our way through Big Band and Doo Wop, and then finish with a variety of rock and roll subgenres. The culmination of this unit will be student presentations on a musician or band from the rock and roll timeline. My favorite part is watching the kids share everything they learned and listening to the song that they liked the most.