Week of July 23rd, 2012

GRAPHING PITCH!

It was a fun mathematical music day today as we explored the relationships between size and pitch and graphed these ideas using a basic chart (show below with three categories: items with certain pitches, and items categorized generally as "low" or "high"). Children participated in graphing by using a sticker to represent their instrument. Our younger groups only categorized pitches (or musical notes) as high or low, but our older students also categorized them by their assigned name in the music scale (we did the C major scale which is all natural notes; C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C).

All of the students enjoyed exploring large and small cymbals, xylophones, desk bells, drums and boomwhackers of different lengths and tones. Our younger groups also enjoyed having the book "Wheels on the Bus" sang to them!

Also make sure to check out the download of the "Grandma's Glasses" mp3. It's a fun fingerplay that we enjoy doing that also illustrates manipulating the pitch of your voice from high to low!

The Three's Class Graph!

“These Are Grandma’s Glasses”

MP3 download (1 mb)

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SCHOOL AGE UPDATE: I apologize for a lack of content for our school age group in this blog! I was out of town last week on our typical music day and therefore, don't have an update on our class for you this week! I will let parents know, however, that this coming Thursday we will be continuing to learn our new prayer chants/songs and also experimenting with this week's lesson of pitch graphing. :)

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REMINDER: No music class next week! I will be absent for my yearly vacation to Mackinac Island with my family! :) I will look forward to resuming normal music classes the week of August 7th!

Week of February 7th, 2010

Toddler through School Age

Today we enjoyed playing matching games with instrument memory cards! We also sang and danced while playing large motor musical games, and did some fun fingerplays as well.

For groups a little too young to play memory, we used the cards to learn new vocabulary words. The included instruments were: tambourine, saxaphone, gutiar, violin, snare drum, xylophone, trombone, french horn, trumpet, flute, clarinet, piano and maracas.

We also graphed the results of reoccurring instruments and school age children played a thought provoking game of "guitar" hang man and also had a question and answer session geared around the instruments we were learning about.

For our infant class, we had a fun teacher and child sing along with the guitar including our favorite tunes like "How Much Is That Doggy In The Window" and "Five Little Ducks Went Out To Play".

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MOM AND DAD CONNECT

PlayMusic.org--a fun way to learn about classical instruments!

Instrument Coloring Pages