April
We are learning about high and low sounds in music this month!
Students will learn how to play high and low sounds on a xylophone! The right side of the xylophone is the high sounds and the left side of the xylophone is the low sounds. Larger bars on the xylophone and larger instrument have lower sounds. Smaller bars on the xylophone and smaller instruments have higher sounds. We will learn some of the science around these facts.
Students will learn to play some of the songs they have been practicing in class all year. We will play See Saw on the xylophone and we will march up and down the xylophone with our song The Noble Duke of York.
We will also learn to keep a steady beat in music class. Some of the children will play the melody of See Saw on the xylophone while others play a borden (accompaniment notes) to a steady beat on the lower xylophones.
And we will play some games to do with high and low to solidify those concepts in music class, especially using our voices in high and low ways.
We will learn to read music that shows two pitches. We will learn that the higher pitch is written on a higher line, or above a line using dots. Lower pitches are dots placed below a line or on a lower line. This will lead us into reading music later in the intermediate grades. Tracking dots on, above or below lines is also a great way to teach kids basic reading skills. The students will be tracking across the page from left to write and interpreting symbols into specific sounds. This helps with basic literacy in all areas of life.
March
The kindergartens have explored all of the non-pitched percussion instruments in the music room.
Now we will play some rhythms, games and songs using these instruments!
We are also still working on the concepts of high and low sounds. After Spring Break we will be playing those sounds on pitched instruments (xylophones) and finding out the difference between those sounds on an instrument.
Here are some videos about high and low to explore:
February
The kindergartens are learning about high and low sounds this February.
We are identifying high sounds by moving our bodies up high, and low sounds by moving our bodies low.
Songs we are using to explore high and low are “The Noble Duke of York” and “See Saw”.
We will eventually play these songs on a xylophone (next term), to learn which way pitch moves on an instrument. Right now, we are exploring pitch (high and low) in our bodies and voices and ears.
We are also still exploring the instruments of the music room! We learned to play the tambourine, hand drum, rhythm sticks, claves, woodblocks, maracas and jingle bells in January, but there are more to learn about! We will learn the more unusual percussion instruments this month and into March.
January
Kindergartens are starting to learn the instrumentarium in the music room. We have many non-pitched percussion instruments that we will be learning to play this term such as:
– maracas
– triangle
– hand drums
– wood blocks
– jingle bells
– guiros
– cabanas
– jingle rattles
– tambourines
– finger cymbals
etc.
If you have any percussion instruments at home, you can have your child demonstrate proper technique on that instrument for you! And maybe they can even play one of the tunes we are playing in class!
We will also be reviewing the rhythm notation we were learning before the winter break and learning to play those patterns on our instruments.
We will also be starting to learn about high and low pitches. In term 3, we will be playing and reading high and low notes/notation in music class.
November
Here is the song for the Kindergartens for the Winter concert. Ms. Papadoulis’ class, please see the grade one tab for your choreography. This choreography is for Ms. Redford and Ms. Corwin’s classes.
October
This October the Kindergarten students will explore some drama skills. We are playing a game that lets them pretend to be different animals. If they tell you that I’m a witch, that’s what is going on! I “cast a spell” to change them into various animals and they explore their “new bodies” by moving in the way that animal moves. Again, this is a great drama activity that the children really enjoy.
We will explore dynamics (loud and soft sounds) by saying a poem that starts soft and gets louder and louder as it goes.
We are also starting dance skills by learning the dance to the Purple People Eater. The main dance step will be “The Twist”. We will then we will draw our version of the Purple People Eater to explore some visual arts.
Here is the song:
We will also begin learning our dance for the upcoming concert. The Kindergarten students will learn a dance from the 1970s. They will learn a dance to the song: “Y.M.C.A.”. This will also support their literacy goals of learning all of their letters.
Here is a dance very similar to the dance we will be doing in the concert:
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.