March
Students in Kindergarten are really learning about high and low sounds in March! We have started playing the xylophones, and on those we will explore where the high and low sounds are, going up and going down in sound.
We are practicing our dance for the concert all the time now! Here is a video with which you can practice at home!
January
We’re continuing to work on Inner Hearing with the song Tony Chestnut.
Here is a video of myself and my daughter (and my cat) “putting the words in our head” as we do that actions for Tony Chestnut. Please do the activity along with us!
We are going to explore the concepts of High and Low Pitches by learning the song The Noble Duke of York. We will also play this song on the xylophones using our hands and our mallet to go “up the hill and down the hill” of the xylophone to learn that the higher pitches are to the right and the lower pitches are to the left. Here is a video to help you learn The Noble Duke of York.
And we’re exploring some drama with this game where we act like a fish, then take turns “going to bed”, acting out all of the things we do when we’re sleepy to get ready for bed.
December
This December we are exploring the non-pitched percussion instruments of the music room including the hand drums, rhythm sticks, tambourines, jingle bells, maracas and woodblocks.
We are playing a dynamics game to explore loud and soft sounds. This is one you could play at home!
Hide a stuffy in the room and one person does not know where that stuffy is.
Everyone else plays instruments as they explore the room. Play softly when the person is far away from the stuffy, and get louder as they get closer. We are having a lot of fun with this game!
We actually didn’t start the songs about inner hearing in November, so I hope to start Tony Chestnut next week. Please see the videos below.
And we will sing Jingle Bells as we play the beat of the song on the jingle bells.
We will also sing O Hanukkah to practice for the sing-along on December 18th. The French immersion classes will also sing it in French.
November
Kindergarten students at Inman will be working on the concept of Inner Hearing in the music room. We will sing songs like BINGO and Tony Chestnut to practice that concept.
Here is a video of my daughter and I teaching students Tony Chestnut.
We will also learn how to say rhythm syllables in music to the quarter note (tah) and eighth notes (ti-ti) and what those mean (quarter note is one sound on a beat, eighth notes are two sounds on a beat).
We will also start the song See Saw.This is a song we will play on the xylophones when we learn them in the new year.
September and October
The Kindergartens at Inman have been working on some basic routines in the music room, and learning some songs that have to do with these concepts:
- safety
- movement
- steady beat
- naming fingers
- naming body parts
- moving in lines
- moving in a circle
- using singing, talking, whisper and “calling” voices
- dancing
- listening for music cues
- echo clapping (identifying and clapping back rhythm patterns)
- echo singing (hearing then singing back correct pitches and using a singing voice)
We learned the story song of Little Bunny Foo Foo to learn to be kind, safe, keep our hands to ourselves at school or use kind/appropriate touch, and to sing and melody together. It is also a fingerplay song working on finger dexterity.
We are using the song 6 Little Ducks to move in a line, in a circle, and then to follow the leader, staying in line order around the room.
We will learn The Twist! A dance from the 1950s! Here is a video of doing the twist:
And here is the song we are doing the Twist to – “The One-Eyed, One-Horned, Flying Purple People Eater”
There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly
a traditional folk song to practice singing and to use our memory for the cumulative addition of animals!
A finger-play song, and to learn the concepts of high and low.
To get us ready for more fingerplays, we will learn the names of our individual fingers with the song “Where is Thumbkin”
And we’ll learn the finger play song, the Itsy Bitsy Spider for more fine motor finger dexterity and the concepts of Up and Down.