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CHRISTMAS PROGRAM DETAILS:
Our Christmas program will be Thursday evening, 12/18, at 6:30 p.m. All students in grades PreK-8 will be participating in the program!!
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Pre-K : We have continued learning new songs and rhymes. We will learn about different ways to use our voices (high/low and loud/soft). We will use a few instruments (maracas, rhythm sticks) to work on the concepts of Play/Stop and Fast/Slow. We are also learning songs and rhymes that start with “M” and “A”.
K & Grade 1: We have been reviewing the concepts of beat vs. rhythm and have added in the counting of basic rhythms using “ta” for quarter notes and “titi” for eighth notes. We also have been talking about high/low pitches and seeing how well we can identify high/low pitches .
Grade 2: We will continue reviewing the concept of beat vs. rhythm, dynamics (loud vs. soft) and tempo (fast vs. slow). Students created their own rhythmic compositions to the song “Poor Little Bug”, figuring out the rhythm of words and how it relates to standard musical notation.
Grades 3-4: Students have continued on recorders this month. We are reviewing the parts of the musical staff, how to read notes in treble clef, and how to play B-A-G on our recorders. Fourth grade has finished their review, added notes E-D-C, and have started “Recorder Karate” , which we will continue after fall break!
Grades 5-6: We continued our study of work songs in 6/8 time with a railroad song, “Paddy Works on the Railway”. We have been learning about chord changes and using the autoharp to practice moving chords around within the structure of this song. Students created some musical accompaniments and performed these compositions as a class. After we complete “Paddy Works” we will talk about music that is grouped in 2 beats vs. music that is grouped in 3 beats.
Grade 7: We’ve continued our overview of classical music style periods, getting ready to finish up our study of the Renaissance period. We will soon be using Chrome Music Lab to create our own music. This is a great learning tool and a lot of fun, too!
Grade 8: We have been working on easy one-finger chords and learning how to move those chords around as we sing children’s songs. We just started learning “Cuban Tab”, an easy way to learn note reading on the guitar that uses a “fret/string” combination to label each note.
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Consolidated Catholic Schools Band (CCSB- Grades 4-8):
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CCSB CHRISTMAS CONCERT DETAILS:
Our CCSB Christmas Concert will be held on Wednesday, December 10 at 6:30 pm in the gym at St. Cletus. All band students will be performing at this concert and are looking forward to showing you how much they have learned this year!
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In addition to preparing for our Christmas concert, the three band classes have been working out of their method books, too.
Beginning Band has been perfecting their first five notes. We are working on “Hot Cross Buns”, “Au Claire de la Lune” and our challenge song is “Jingle Bells”.
Intermediate Band is reviewing the first several pages in our method book. We are excited to move on in the book to learn new songs! The goal for 2nd year band students is to complete Book 1. We are continuing with Band Karate and we started using Smart Music, too.
Advanced Band 6th and 7th grade are working on finishing their method book. We are getting close, but the end of the book is very challenging!! Advanced Band 8 has been working out of Book 2 learning new rhythms and time signatures. These students are also still earning Band Karate belts and we have quite a few new Black Belt musicians at various levels. Super impressive!!
We had several 7th and 8th graders who participated in the Chaminade Honor Band during fall break. They gave a beautiful performance! We also have some students who are going to audition for the Metro 8 Honor Band in November. I’m so excited for our musicians to have these experiences!
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If you want to see and hear more of what we've been up to in music class,
follow me on Twitter @ChrumaStCletus
