A Good Beginning

It's been a good beginning in the Music Room this year! Kindergarten through third grade classes are working on showing the pulse (or steady beat) or making patterns to the music using the body as an instrument (stomps, pats, claps, snaps—we call it body percussion). They also learned that everyone can sing, and part of our work is to learn to use voices well. This week we made class recordings of familiar songs so we can see how much improvement there is by the end of the year.

Second and third graders are reading rhythms, and half of the third graders have finished their rhythm composition that we will use next week with Oki Na Taiko, our Japanese song about drums.

Fourth Grade has had a bit of a slow start, but they're working on compound meter rhythms and will begin using their recorders the week of September 17 (Homecoming week).

September 14th is National Anthem Day, and we'll be celebrating by having the fourth graders learn 

1. when and why Francis Scott Key wrote it
2. to sing verse 1 from memory
3. why we don't sing verse 3

Choir is taking awhile to get set up, but we'll get started in October when 3rd and 4th grade football is over. Some of the boys out for that team want to sing, and we'll wait until they're available. I'll get out the specific date when we have everything ready.