Yankee Doodle Comes to Music!

Level 3 students have been learning about the Revolutionary War in Literacy this trimester.  In Music, the 4th graders have extended our learning about that era with a Yankee Doodle project.  The students learned several verses of the song and a hand-clapping game to play while singing the song.  Students also learned about the use of drums and drummer boys during the Revolutionary War.  We took these two parts and created an AB pattern (first sing and play the game, then march to find a new partner).

After this, we created a C section to our pattern by adding in I and V chords to play along with our singing.  But this wasn't enough for us, so we added in two sets of circle dances to perform when singing and playing chords on the instruments.

In the end, we ended up with this form:  ABCBCA. 
A = hand clapping game and singing
B = march to instruments and/or dance and game places
C = circle dances

The students have worked very hard and were excited to create these videos for you!  In one music class, we were able to take one video, critique that video, discard that video, and make another one that made most of us happy with our performances.  Enjoy the final products!

Mr. Bower's 4th Grade
Mrs. Everett's 4th Grade
Mr. Klingberg's 4th Grade
Mr. Pindar's 4th Grade

Kindergarten composes High and Low sounds

Did you know that the book Brown Bear, Brown Bear what do you see? was written by Bill Martin in the year 1962?  Mr. Martin's book is 50 years old, just like Lincoln school!  This week, the Kindergartners and I read this wonderful book together.  I was so pleased to hear many of them reading right along with me!  After we read the story, we talked about some of my favorites from the book:  the purple cat, yellow duck, blue horse, goldfish, green frog, and red bird.  The class was divided up into 5 groups and given one of these file folders.

 I found the images on Pinterest

 Blue Horse File Folder

Inside of the folder.  Some folders have high and low on spaces, 

other folders have high and low on lines.

The students then worked together to compose music for their part of the story, using high and low sounds. To compose, the students were allowed to choose where their sounds would be placed- either high or low! After all of the pieces had been placed, students sang their compositions with me while following the picture notes placed on their 2 line staff.  Check out their super work!

Writing with our riser buddies

 Goldfish, goldfish

So PROUD of our work! 

We made AB Patterns too! 

 So proud!

 Many hands make light work 

2nd Grade Composes

2nd grade has been hard at work composing and practicing a song about Fairy Tales.  We all had the opportunity to work in groups to create parts of our song.  Each class was divided into 5 groups and given a snowman outline.  Students worked together to use the bottom part of the snowman to write their rhythm and lyrics for their part of the song.  After our first day of work, most of our projects looked like this:

 During our second day of work, students gave their snowman a melody in the snowman's midsection.  Each group had a soprano glockenspiel in which they could experiment with three pitches, So La and Mi to create the melody for their part of the song.

 The finished product included the dynamic marking in the top part of the snowman.  Not many groups reached this part of the project but all groups worked hard to complete as much of their part of the song as they could.
Here is a finished product:

I took the completed student projects and pieced them all together, adding a beginning and ending to help the piece feel complete.  We have practiced and will perform our song this week!


Students performed their song at the Holiday Sing on December 21.  It took two takes before we were able to capture this video of the 2nd grade singing their creation and you can hear how difficult we made our song- we had no idea!  I hope you all enjoy their composition!

http://viewpure.com/ffmAoyVnfI8

1st Grade performs "Romper, Stomper and Boo"

The 1st Graders had a glorious time performing "Romper, Stomper and Boo", a story from our series Spotlight on Music.   We worked on Piano (soft sounds) and Forte (loud sounds) and worked with different instruments.  We took several music classes to get everything just right for our video performances to share with our families at home.  It was so much fun and the singers really took a lot of pride in their work.
Unfortunately, my video camera has failed and did not allow me to load the videos into a format you can see at home.  Don't worry!  Many more creative videos are to come- maybe even before Winter Break!  Fingers crossed!

Kindergarten Acting

Kindergarten has been learning many things in the Music room.  We have been focusing on following the heartbeat on paper and on the board (tracking) and on fast vs. slow.  Fast and slow have been loads of fun!  We have learned several songs including 'The Old Gray Cat', a song from our series, Spotlight on Music. 

We learned 'The Old Gray Cat' first by using our visual literacy skills to talk through the story and the challenging vocabulary words found in the song.  For example, the cat does not come sneaking, he comes creeping and the mice are not eating but rather nibbling the cheese.  So if your Kindergartner has been telling you that he or she is nibbling dinner and learned that word in Music class, it's true!

One of the last things we did with this song was to act it out.  We had such a BALL!  I was able to take a few videos of their acting skills, but unable to post them due to some glitches with my video camera.  The singers and I will take some new videos to share with you soon.

4th Grade Foley Art

4th Graders are currently working on a project in Art, Music and Literacy centered around tall tales.  In music class, students are adding the sound effects to accompany the tall tales written in class and the shadow puppets made in art to create a performance piece to perform in the music room.  We have spent some time watching how the professionals recreate sounds for movies and television.  Here are some of the videos we've watched.

LA Times

Gary Hecker

We have been amazed by their work!  It is giving us lots of ideas for our performaces.  Students have been using the music room instruments to experiment and create the best sounds to accompany their shadow puppet plays.  I can't wait to see the final production!  Look for some videos after Winter Break of their amazing work!
 

Rhyme Time with Kindergarten

One of the literacy goals in Kindergarten is to learn about rhyming words.  What better place to do that than in Music!  There are so many childrens songs that use rhymes.  The best part about them is that they are so fun to sing!  We have been singing "Oh, A-Hunting We Will Go" for the last several weeks.  Our favorite parts are when we sing about the bear in underwear and the pig in a wig. 

We use many books in the Music classroom, including "Oh, A-Hunting We Will Go".  Below is the version I like best- the illustrations are wonderful and the sequence matches the version we sing in class. 



Image via Amazon.com

ISBN # 978-0-689-71503-7

Next, we'll be singing "Down By the Bay" which is another one of my favorites!  Just wait and see the verses we compose!