Grade 2 Unit 5 Newsletter

Grade 2 Unit 5 Newsletter

“Music has a message” was the central idea in the How we express ourselves in Unit 5. Students continued to develop their music writing skills, singing with solfege terminology and hand signs, and writing 4 beat measures with proper rhythmic notation. Students played the xylophone in a call and response style and practiced feeling the beat and repeated rhythm patterns in Charlie’s ostinato. The song Doe a Dear from the Sound of Music with Julie Andrews introduced the students to a song that though simple at first hearing, allowed the students to sing in an ostinato pattern in a simple 2 part form. The melody uses the C Major scale which the students had been writing on the 5 line and 4 space musical staff.

Kindergarten Unit 5 Newsletter

Kindergarten Unit 5 How we express ourselves, “A Tale to Tell”. Kindergarten students explored “A Tale to tell”  Unit 5 by taking their understanding of “Peter and the Wolf” from the previous unit and applying it through dance to tell a new story. The musical patterns discovered in “Peter and the Wolf”, where each character was described musically by the sound of an instrument and its melody, helped the students develop a more focused level of attentive listening and general musical awareness. Students were introduced to a Gavotte-  baroque dance music, in Bach's Solo Violin Sonata in E Major. They were able to discern the musical patterns. As movements were added, the students took cues from the music, to feel the beat and follow the dance patterns.

It was performed at the Open house on April 10th. (MU5.K.EB) (MU6.B). 

http://youtu.be/2Mr54OXYtQo

In addition students were working on their singing voice and musical understanding by describing how music made them feel (MU 5.K.A) in the song “Puff the Magic Dragon” and the piece “2 Birds and the Raja” (MU2.K.C).

Pre-Kindergrten Unit 4 Newsletter

Pre-Kindergarten Unit 4 Newsletter

Food is the focus of Unit 4 called “Sharing the planet” and the music class’s theme was “Music is food for the spirit” After listening to the Spring from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, the children looked at the painting from painter Guiseppe Arcimboldo (1526 -1593) called Spring which depicts a face whose features are flowers of the season. Feeling the happy mood of the music Spring, the children identified the various aspects of the face such as the nose and mouth in the portraits. They described the flowers that created each feature. Meanwhile, from the music listening, the children shared ideas about the mood and sounds they heard and linked some to animals. (MU4.PK.C).Several songs about food were sung such as “When a dinosaur is hungry” which focused on types of food one likes and dislikes and where food comes from. (MU6.PK.A). The song “Aiken Drum” provided an opportunity for the children to use their imagination to name the features of Aiken Drum’s face by selecting different fruits or vegetables and then add it on in song. The activities extended to more listening to Vivaldi’s Spring and then to drawing a face made with fruits or vegetable themes like in “Aiken Drum” and in the painting style of Acrimboldo.