Showing posts with label Nutcracker suite. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nutcracker suite. Show all posts

Week of August 1st, 2016




Let's Learn About Russia!

This month in music class, our culture focus is Russia! We're learning all about the basics of the country, traditional folk instruments, storytelling, and more!

This week, we started with the basics: where is Russia, and what are some of the country's features?

Russia is HUGE! There are 9 times zones in the country, and it has many awesome land features, including the Siberian tundra. The tundra has long winters and cold summers--keeping its secondary layer of earth (called Permafrost) permanently frozen under the ground.

Today we learned that Russia has many interesting animals in the tundra and surrounding areas--including foxes, and snow leopards!


We also found out about the Kremlin--the official residences of the president of Russia--and looked at traditional Russian dress.



Discussing Russia in music class wouldn't be complete without learning a little about Peter Tchaikovsky--who learned to play piano at 5! We discovered that he wrote over 169 pieces of music including The Nutcracker Suite and Swan Lake, both of which we listened to!




We also had fun dancing with scarves today--check out the pictures below!














QUESTIONS TO ASK YOUR CHILD:

1) What are the colors in the Russian flag? Red, white and blue

2) Can you name any of the animals in Russia? Snow leopard, fox (to name a few)

Week of December 26th, 2011

All about the ballet!

The children really enjoyed learning about the ballet today and listening to some classical Tchaikovsky pieces from the Nutcracker Suite! Boys and girls alike were fascinated to watch a few clips from the Royal Opera Ballet "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy" and the Russian company Kirov performing another group scene in the Nutcracker Ballet. We also enjoyed trying a little French vocabulary (being that the first ballet was in France) and learned some ballet moves like pliƩ, grand-pliƩ and piroutte!

Check out the video of the schoolagers creating their own ballet company to "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy" and also the video we watched in class today! Twos through School Agers also had a coloring page with ballet facts to take home. Ask your child about what they saw!

Also, my apologies for the blog and music class being late. Unfortunately I was ill last Tuesday! Hope everyone had a lovely holiday!

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