THE OPERA!
Today, our students learned about the opera!
The kids were entertained by me demonstrating the idea that you "sing everything" in opera by pretending to go about a normal day at Joyful Noise using nothing but a singing voice. They really thought that was hilarious!
I also told them I was going to show them a picture of several famous opera singers, and I brought this out:
Students were very suprised to discover that one of their favorite children's shows (Wonder Pets on Nickelodeon) is actually an "opera" in cartoon form!
You won't believe how well our two year old class knew and sang this show's theme song with me, the first time around!
I also introduced our friends to the famous opera singer, Luciano Pavarotti. Each classroom has a picture of him on their wall today so students will remember learning about him and also watching his brilliant performance of "Ave Maria" (see the youtube video below!)
Along with learning about this famous operatic voice,
we also learned that:
we also learned that:
--Bel Canto is an Italian term for "beautiful singing"
--Operas can be serious or funny!
--Opera singers sing very loudly with strong vocal and diaphragm muscles
Our younger students also used shakers and did our usual favorite movement songs: bouncing songs, Knees Up Mother Brown, and Elevator/Escalator!
Through repetitive movement songs we are not only experiencing the music, but also learning to control our bodies and predict what comes next. They just never seem to get tired of some of these fun tunes. There's always something new to learn!
Our younger students also used shakers and did our usual favorite movement songs: bouncing songs, Knees Up Mother Brown, and Elevator/Escalator!
Through repetitive movement songs we are not only experiencing the music, but also learning to control our bodies and predict what comes next. They just never seem to get tired of some of these fun tunes. There's always something new to learn!
We also had a ton of fun "freeze dancing" to the beats on the keyboard.
Check it out!