As an end to the 2015-2016 school year, I wanted to take a few minutes and review each grade level and what we accomplished in music class this year! Please feel free to read about each level, or skip to your child's grade and discover what fine musicians your students have grown into throughout the school year! Each grade has a labeled Header for easy reading!
Kindergarten
Kindergarten is a year of foundation laying. Each concept that I taught to the kindergarten kiddoes this year will be built upon next year to reveal a concrete musical concept of rhythm and/or melody!
Students started the year by discovering their singing voices through Vocal Exploration.
Vocal Exploration introduces students to their two singing voices: Head Voice and Chest Voice. Our head voices produce higher pitches while our chest voice sings lower register notes. We used ball tosses, bumble bee flying, note card doodles, and so much more to move our voices up and down the registers and learn the difference between the two!
Students continued their discovery of the human voice with Vocal Timbre. Vocal Timbre refers to the color, texture, and quality of the human voice. Throughout the first few months we learned about the Four Voices: Singing, Speaking, Whisper, and Calling Voice! Students used all four throughout the year in endless combinations with various folk songs. We are Dancing in the Forest, Muffins, Grizzly Bear, Allee Galloo Gallee, and Naughty Kitty Cat are just a few folk songs that we used to learn our Four Voices.
Finally, students were ready for the most basic and common musical element: Steady Beat! Students will use this term throughout music to describe the pulse, or heart beat, of a song or piece of music. Students marched, patted, snapped, clapped, drummed, and played the steady beat! By placing the beat in our bodies we can feel the music and better understand and learn it!
Kindergarten spent the final trimester of the school year learning Comparatives: Fast vs. Slow, High vs. Low, and Loud vs. Soft. Students also learned the proper music term for Fast vs Slow as Tempo and Loud vs Soft as Forte and Piano!
We will work closely with High vs. Low next year and learn a new musical term for these pitches!
Kindergarten is ending the year with singing games, chants, and play in the music classroom. The final concept we are preparing is "The Way the Words Go!" or Beat vs. Word. We will name this as rhythm next year and begin to explore quarter notes and eighth notes in 1st grade!
Kindergarten was a fun musical discovery. Students learned and played each day! I cannot wait to begin building up these young musicians next year! :)
1st Grade
1st grade brings so many new discoveries in music. Our first new discovery dealt with rhythm! Students learned that each beat of music can have 1 sound or 2 sounds. We then labeled a beat with 1 sound as "Long" and 2 sounds as "short short".
We used these two prep terms throughout class while we sang songs like Bee, Bee, Sea Saw, Apple Tree, Queen Queen Caroline, Jean Dressed in Green, and so many more. As we sang these songs, we used the SMARTboard to place picture icons on each beat and identify if they had 1 or 2 sounds.
Soon, students were ready to learn the new term for a "long" beat as a Quarter Note and the "short short" as paired Eighth Notes! We count these two notes as "ta" and "ti ti"!
We continued on to learn about high vs low and review from kindergarten! Students used picture icons to place "high and low" sounds on a two line staff. We would also sing the song using "high" and "low" in place of the words to train our ears to hear the difference! Not soon after, students were ready to learn the new musical words for these two pitches. High = so and Low = mi! We use these solfedge pitches to help us become better music readers and singers all while helping build and train our ears! These pitches also help us write more musically and we got to try our hands at composing for the first time!
At the end of the school year, 1st graders started diving into beats without any sound on them. We identified these as "silent beats" and not long after, we named them with their musical name of Quarter Rests!
1st grade students can now read rhythm flashcards, sight sing So-Mi patterns, hear and dictate (or speak back using proper syllables) So-Mi and ta, ti-ti patterns! It is truly incredible how fast they have grown and how much they have learned!
Next year, we will continue to learn new rhythms, pitches, and musical terms to help us read even more difficult music!
2nd Grade
2nd grade was such an exciting time! Students came in already knowing Quarter Note, Eighth Notes, Quarter Rests, and So - Mi!
We focused much of our year on learning new and complex rhythms.
We started first by listening for and singing "long notes" which we later learned the musical name as Half Notes. These notes receive two beats and are counted as "ta-oh"! We have a fun time exploring these new notes and playing rhythm patterns using them!
2nd graders also worked hard and learned the new terms of "Repeat Sign" and "Ostinato". A repeat sign is a musical symbol that appears at the end of a song or section of music and tells us to play the song or section over again! Students worked on several songs to discover this symbol! Amasee was the main song to help us learn this new term.
An Ostinato is a pattern that repeats itself. Ostinati are generally short phrases, 4 - 8 beats long, that are played together to form complex rhythmic passages. We created our own ostinati with themes that each class got to select! It was a great way to work on composing and ostinato!
The most complex, yet fun, new concept in 2nd grade is the learning of 16th notes. 16th notes are very short rhythms that only take up 1/4 of a beat! We used the term "short short short short" to identify these fast notes in the early stages of working with them.
After a few weeks working with songs like Tideo, Pick a Bale, Paw Paw Patch, Dinah, and Chicken on a Fencepost, students discovered the name for the 16th note and how we count it using the rhythm syllables ta-ka-di-mi! :)
2nd grade learned several new folk dances this year as well.
Folk dances are great teaching tools for musical concepts BUT I love teaching them for their connective powers. Shy students come out of their shells, unlikely friends come together, and students make connections with those around them! It is truly an incredible thing that I feel so passionate about that I filmed each class doing their favorite folk dance. Please find your student's teacher and observe your student connecting, smiling, laughing, and ENJOYING DANCING! (Even the boys!) It will shock you how much fun is had as each class dances and sings together!
Mrs. Skay's Class
Mrs. Schneider's Class
Mr. Hammerschimdt's Class
***A Special "Thank You" to Mr. Hammerschmidt for sharing his musical talent with us! We loved having you help us make music! :)
I hope that you and your student have enjoyed each musical discovery this year! I cannot tell you how blessed I feel to be closing my 2nd year of teaching with such incredible, hard working students! I cannot wait for next year!
Exciting side note: All of you 2nd grade parents, My schedule has changed for next year and I will be teaching 3rd grade music again! I AM THRILLED!
Enjoy your summer and stay "Tuned" to my blog as I fill you in on my Summer Music Education courses, changes in the music room, and sneak peaks at lessons for next year!
Stay cool, stay safe, stay musical!
Mrs. Abby Hoselton!
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