Week Eight in Review (Oct. 24 - Oct. 28)

Greetings from the music room! This was an exciting week of singing, moving, and playing instruments! Here are some of the highlights:

Kindergarten students continued to focus on the difference between loud and quiet sounds this week. Students practiced all previous loud/quiet songs. Students also worked together to make a list of five places where one should be quiet and five places where one may be loud. Lastly, students practice using their singing, speaking, and whisper voices in a fun song called Peanut Butter and Jelly.

First grade students continued to practice the difference between beat and rhythm this week using chants Spider, Spider Legs and All and Queen, Queen Caroline. Students also explored the rhythm of Big Black Cats by arranging themselves on pieces of orange construction paper to show zero, one, and two sounds on a beat. Students further explored the presence of zero sounds (silence) on a beat with by using the interactive white board and the song Do You Know the Muffin Man. While Mrs. Aaronson pointed to a series of eight muffins, students said "yum" for each muffin. As muffins were removed, students were asked to remain silent for each missing muffin.

Second grade students began their folk dancing unit this week! Students worked with partners to learn a folk dance called Heel & Toe Polka. In this folk dance, students practiced sashaying, partner clapping, turning with two hands, and working with many different classmates. Students also continued to practice singing melodic patterns containing the new low note, do. Students were given melody cards for the song Mouse, Mousie and asked to put them into the correct order. This was a challenge for the students and they worked together using the projector to place their cards in the correct order.

Third grade students began to 'level-up' to do re mi sol and la melodic patterns this week by learning the song Great Big House in New Orleans. Students also enjoyed working with a friend to learn a clapping game to the chant Double Trouble. Students were then challenged to speak a short rhyme The Halloween Cat while performing a four-beat body percussion pattern. After students were secure with this rhyme, students were asked to use their own adjective to describe the cat. Beginning with Mrs. Aaronson, we went all the way around the circle until each student had a chance to share their own version of The Halloween Cat.


Fourth grade students concluded all of the written work that they had begun last week. Students then began playing recorders! Students learned about the history of the recorder and how the soprano recorder is part of a much larger family of recorders. Students learned basic recorder playing technique: how to breathe and how to hold the instrument. Students also learned to play two notes: B and A.

Fifth grade students enjoyed a change of pace this week. In honor of the upcoming spooky holiday, students were treated to the spooky sounds of the haunted house courtesy of a Walt Disney record from the 1960s. At the end of the summer when the PTA was cleaning out the back closet of the school, Mrs. Aaronson discovered a record player and a series of old records. In addition to a collection of spooky sounds, this record also contains six stories in sound. As students listened to a sound story about the haunted house, they were asked to either write a brief narrative describing what they heard or draw a series of pictures to depict it. Students came up with some very creative ideas to explain the sounds that they heard! Students also reviewed the song Hill and Gully Rider and were formally introduced to syncopation.

Mrs. Ellis's students continued to focus on the difference between loud and quiet sounds this week. Students practiced all previous loud/quiet songs and read the book Mortimer by Robert Munsch. In this book, Mortimer is a little boy who decides to sing rather than go to sleep at night. Students enjoyed listening as his mother, father, and even the police told him to "be quiet!" Students also had the opportunity to play up and down on the xylophone to match the movement of the characters up and down the stairs. Lastly, students worked together to make a list of five places where one should be quiet and five places where one may be loud.

Mrs. Ross's students reviewed the rhythm to Big Black Cats and practiced reading quarter notes, quarter rests, and eighth notes. Students also began learning a new chant entitled 2,4,6,8. This chant will also be used to practice quarter notes and eighth notes. Students also enjoyed reviewing the rhyme Five Little Pumpkins by reading the book Pete the Cat: Five Little Pumpkins.

Mrs. Muller's students reviewed the songs John Kanaka and Hill and Gully Rider. Students enjoyed having the opportunity to play a repeating pattern from John Kanaka on the xylophone. Students also practiced reading rhythm patterns containing dotted quarter notes/eighth notes. Lastly, students began learning a new song, Little Birch Tree, and listening for this song in Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 4.