February in Music

____ Here's what happened in music recently (February):

• Kindergartners finished their introduction to the different timbres of the melodic percussion (tone bars) - xylophones, metallophones and glockenspiels.  After playing each 'family' separately to explore their characteristics and size, we put two of them together to accompany our singing.  Students played a beat bordun (open 5th) on the Bass Xylophones in a pattern:  Tah, Tah, Tah, Rest (which matches "Bow Wow Wow" from the song they accompanied.  The glockenspiels played the oppositie - Rest, Rest, Rest, Tah - filling in a splash of sound on the beat the BXs were not playing.  Students were introduced to the musical notation for Tah and Rest (quarter note and quarter rest). 

• First and Second Graders prepared songs and pieces to share with families and invited guests and shared them at their Specials Program:  Our Earth Matters.  The first graders added nstrument parts to a Traditional Native American piece called The Earth is Our Mother, and the second graders added accompaniment parts on the Orff instruments (xylophones, glockenspiels and metallophones) to a piece by Colorado composer, Elizabeth Gilpatrick, called Care for the Earth.  These two pieces were woven together into one ABA musical whole at the performance.  Students prepared three other piece to share at the program - all on an environmental theme.  Throughout the process students also learned about performance etiquette.

• Third Graders continued learning to play the recorder.  In this rotation they reviewed the basics of how to hold the recorder, how to blow the recorder and how to start and stop a sound (tonguing).  We reviewed B and A - fingering and notation, and added their third note - G.  Students learned at least three songs using those three notes.  So their own personal recorders were sent home along with a packet containing music, fingering chart and some extension activities.  Students are encouraged to practice at home and log their time on the linked google form (Practice Logs) on this blog, 

• Fourth Graders got back to working on pieces for their upcoming Colorado Connection Concert.  These will happen before spring break and parents will be notified of their child's performance date and time 3 weeks ahead.  In this rotation students were introduced to the last new song to be added into our concert, Colorado!  We continued working to get all the pieces ready to share. 

• Fifth Graders returned to focusing on melody in this rotation.  The reviewed treble clef notation and had a 2nd take on the 50 in 5 challenge (timed note naming challenge).  Several students bettered their scores and more students were placed in the Hall of Fame for various times.  Our big project was being introduced to a melody as we created a choreography for the phrases and then learned to play the simple melody (really just the melodic skeleton of a piece) on tonebars set up in a pentatonic scale.  Using some fancy technology to notate the changes as we made them, students made small changes to the melody to make it their own class composition - double or quadrupling notes to change the rhythm and adding passing tones.  We played the piece in unison and in a melodic canon - dividing both by range and by timbre.