In Kindergarten through 6th grade, we spent a lot of time in January exploring our virtual “Winter Wonderland” classroom. We were able to see so many really cool things, with lots of different and amazing performances. Be sure to ask your kids about it, it was a lot of fun!
In February, we will be continuing to add to the musical concepts we have been working on this year.
PreSchool: PreK has been working on our songs about snow and snowmen, our letter “E” songs, “Ellie the Elephant” and “Elephants Have Wrinkles” (they love this one!), and our letter “P” songs about penguins.
K & Grade 1: Kindergarten and First Grade has been talking about pitch and the idea of going up and going down. We will talk about high, medium and low voices using the song, “Icicles.” First Grade will also perform the song on boomwhackers, which is always fun! First Grade students studied the concept of pitch using xylophones to tell the story of “Goldilocks and the Three Bears”. This was also a lot of fun!
Grade 2: Second Grade has been practicing reading rhythms at different tempos, using ta, titi and rests. They are doing really well with this concept, with most of the students having great success, sightreading rhythms up to 8 beats long! We also had a lot of fun moving to Brahm’s “Hungarian Dance #5” with a fun video entitled, “The Chef!”
Grades 3-4: Students will continue working on recorder and also using MusicPlay to review various musical concepts including note reading, rhythm reading, tempos, and ostinatos. Fourth grade will continue using “Recorder Karate”, earning belts as often as we have time!
Grades 5-6: We have been working on songs in 3/4 and 4/4 time. Students created easy motions and body percussion to accompany “Movin’ Right Along.” Sixth grade also created percussion accompaniments for this song. We will also see how well we can distinguish between songs in 3 vs. 4. Sixth grade will be moving into a study of the history of jazz music while fifth graders will begin preparing for our performance at the Duchesne Song Festival in April.
Grades 7- We have continued our study of the Baroque period of Classical music, including learning about Bach and Stradavarius. Students created their own Bach style compositions using a Bach Google Doodle. We will finish this unit in the next week or so and then will move on to the Classical period.
Grade 8: We’ve been getting back into our guitar curriculum, reviewing easy chords and working on playing single line melodies using Cuban tab. We will begin reading notes in the treble clef on the first string and will be adding notes on the second string later this month.
CCSB Band (Grades 4-8):
All of our levels of band have been doing a fantastic job! Our beginning band is doing great, continuing to perfect our first five notes with new rhythms including 8th notes. Intermediate Band is working on Level 2 of Band Karate and is working on getting more comfortable with Smart Music, which is a fantastic tool for practicing. Advanced Band members are preparing for our performance at the Archdiocesan Instrumental Festival at the beginning of March. They are sounding great and I am looking forward to their performance!
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If you want to see and hear more of what we've been up to in music class,
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