December
In December the Kindergarten classes are learning the song Old Toy Trains and Division 21 is learning the song Love, Peace and Harmony.
We are learning to play the Hand Drums in class. We are learning to read quarter and eighth notes and say them in various patterns. We are playing those patterns on the hand drums as well. We are also exploring various sounds that the hand drums can make, and imitating the sound of train wheels with the hand drums.
November
The students are learning to read and say rhythm patterns now! They have been clapping them for two months, and are ready to learn what they have been doing in a visual form. Reading music is so good for their reading development too! They learn that symbols mean sounds, to read numbers of syllables and to track their eyes from left to right across a page.
Students are learning some games in the music room to work on using their singing voices, matching pitches and hearing loud and soft sounds. We will play Doggie Doggie Where’s Your Bone and a “hot and cold” type game but using loud/soft to find the object.
We will be singing “Old Toy Trains” for this time of year and to continue our train theme. Here is a recording on YouTube that they can sing along with!
We will also learn Tony Chestnut to work on inner hearing. Here is a video I made during online learning with my daughter during covid that the children can learn this poem along with:
October
We will be exploring the use of space in October. Young students will begin to be aware of their surroundings, making sure that they have plenty of room to move as they explore free space in the classroom through dance and movement activities. They will be walking in lines around the room and creating a circle shape as a class – a challenge for little ones!
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!
Three Little Witches
A finger-play song and for counting
Spider on the Floor
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.
When we play Freeze Dance, we will listen to this song because it is almost Halloween!
September
The Kindergarten students will be getting used to the routines we encounter in the music room. We will work on walking to music in a line, forming and circle and warming up our bodies and voices. We will learn about our different kinds of voices. We will sing simple call and response phrases in order to match pitch and begin to use our singing voices correctly. The students will learn how to dance safely in a space with other children by looking around themselves to make sure they have space and not moving around the room in the way of the other children. We will dance to music, and notice when the music stops. Using Freeze Dance, we will listen to those cues and freeze when the music stops. There are many routines to get used to in music, and that should take us all of September to do so.