School is almost over for the year, so what better way to start the summer than with this song! It’s one of my favourite songs by The Beatles, and I’ve put the words in the video so that you can follow along and learn to sing it too 🙂
Category: Primary (Page 1 of 2)
Music can share so many different emotions with us. Some songs can make us feel happy and excited, while other songs can make us feel sad or relaxed. The best part about this, though, is that one song could have a totally different emotion for different people! A song that makes you feel happy might not give the same feeling to somebody else, and that’s one of the reasons that music is so special!
I’d love to hear what kind of music gives you an emotional connection. See if you can find a different answer for each of these emotions. Your answers could be a song title, a personal experience (like “listening to my brother play piano”, or “hearing my mom singing”), or something else!
The music that makes me feel excited is…
The music that makes me feel sad is…
The music that makes me feel calm is…
The music that makes me feel ___________ (pick a different emotion!) is….
I’d love to hear your answers, so please send them to derek.maroney@burnabyschools.ca
Sometimes it seems like making music can be hard, especially if you don’t have an instrument at home! Sure, you can always sing a song, but what can you do if you want to play music on something?
This is where we get to be creative with our “instruments”. There are so many different ways that we can create different sounds using just the objects in our house. How many different sounds can you get out of just using a cereal box? Maybe it can be like a drum, if you hit the box with spoons. Maybe it can be a shaker, if you shake the cereal bag. Maybe it can be a megaphone and make your voice louder, if you sing into the hollow box with both ends.
My challenge for you is to see if you can find things around your house that you can make music with in each of these ways:
- Something you can shake
- Something you can scrape
- 3 different things that you can use as drums
- One object that you can get 3 different sounds out of
- Something that has both a high pitched sound and a low sound
- Something that makes your voice sound different when you sing into it
- Something that makes a sound that you might hear on a beach
- Something from nature that can make a sound
Please share some of your findings with me, I’d love to see/hear what you create! You can either share them as a comment on this post, or by email to derek.maroney@burnabyschools.ca
Happy hunting!
For inspiration, here’s a video of one of my favourite musicians, Jacob Collier, creating a song using only found sounds. So cool!
The Burnaby music teachers put together a video of all of us singing or playing along to the Music Monday song from last year. See if you can spot me and Mr. Yanko in the video!
Happy Music Monday, everyone!
Every year, on the first Monday of May, students all across Canada come together to share songs with each other and to discuss what music means to everyone. It’s one of my favourite days of the school year, and I’m sad that we’re not able to celebrate it together in person this year.
That doesn’t mean that we can’t celebrate it online, though!
Here’s a video of me playing one of my favourite songs. I wanted to share this with you today, because not only do I love this song, but I think it also has a really important message about music. Even though it doesn’t have any words, it still tells a story and shares a message, which is different for everyone who hears it. I think that’s the beauty of music: it can connect to people without even needing to speak any words. The song is “Words Unspoken”, by Steven Martin. I hope you enjoy it 🙂
I’d love to hear from students of all grades about why music is important to you. Do you have a favourite song? A favourite instrument? Does music help you when you’re feeling sad or stressed? You can share your thoughts in the comments, or send me an email at derek.maroney@burnabyschools.ca, I’m looking forward to hearing your thoughts!
If you’ve never seen a symphony before, this is a great chance! The Vancouver Symphony Orchestra (VSO) is putting on live concerts almost every week, entirely free to watch online. The next concert is happening tonight (April 30th) at 7:30, and it’s a great chance to see these musicians perform live. Maybe you can even recognize some of the instruments!
Tonight’s concert includes compositions by Bach and Mozart, two of the most famous and important classical composers, so you won’t want to miss it 🙂
(Intended for primaries)
It’s Earth Day tomorrow, April 22nd! What does Earth Day mean to you? Music is a great way of passing on ideas about how we can help our planet, so see if you can add your own verse to the song!
Or, you could try playing along to the song at home. It doesn’t even have to be with a “real” instrument, be creative with it!
Have you ever seen an orchestra performance before? Maybe this is your first time hearing the word “orchestra”, and that’s ok!
Here’s a short video that gives us a tour around all of the different instruments that are part of an orchestra. There are a lot of them, so see if you can remember the names of at least 2 of them! If you were already pretty familiar with the orchestra, were there any instruments that you didn’t know before watching the video?
Primaries, here’s a challenge for you!
See if you can recreate the melody of “Pete The Cat” using the Song Maker website.
I’ve made a simpler version of the melody on piano, and to get you started, the first colour is yellow.
Have fun, and good luck!
Such a fun video!
How would you describe the changes in the music from the beginning to the end? Try using the words “dynamics” and “tempo”, if you remember what those mean 🙂