Welcome back to another school year!  
We have been in school almost three weeks and we are off to a great start! This year I have 2 Preschool classes, 1 AK class, 6 Kindergarten classes, 5 First grade classes and 5 Second grade classes.  

 We have begun our year with the Rules Rap by Dr. Jean.   Rules Rap
(The link is a video of kids from another school performing, but you get the idea.) 

In K-2 we are working on the steady beat and we do a song called Make A Little Rhythm by Nancy Stewart where we pass instruments around the circle while trying to maintain a steady beat.  It's a great exercise for this.  Here's a link to the song:  Make A Little Rhythm
We are also talking about how we can make musical instruments out of recycled objects like empty coffee cans to make a drum or by putting beans into a container to make a shaker.  
The students are watching a video by Sesame Street called:  Let's Make Music.  This is where the characters of Sesame Street meet the group Stomp.  

Some books we have read are:  The Rules Rap, Howard B. Wigglebottom Learns to Listen, Too Loud Lily, Pete the Cat Rocking in My School Shoes, What Makes A Rainbow, and Down By the Bay.

Let's hope the weather cools off and we receive some much needed rain.  Maybe we will have to do some rain dances in class!  

Musically yours,

Ms. Soukup

Today is January 25th, wow, this month is flying by very quickly!  These past 2 weeks I have been working with the concept of FORM in my classes.  A piece of music is created by using various ideas or themes and then linking them together to make one piece.  The Kindergarten students have learned a new song, 'Oh What A Day' and it has the form of ABA.  The First grade students learned a song for their concert, Let the Music Begin, with a form of AABA.

  All grades had a listening lesson for the music called the Syncopated Clock where the form is AABACCA, which is called Rondo form because it always goes back to the A part before introducing a new idea.  http://www.pianimation.com/2011/05/05/syncopated-clock-listening-activity/  Once we listened to the music the students had their own living room picture and we placed the clocks for each section of music on the wall.  We did a scarf dance for a follow up activity. The scarf activity was very much like this video:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5_iFepVzM0
We had a great time with this!

The 2nd grade students are beginning a unit on the instruments of the orchestra and their families.  We watched a video called 'In Tune with the Brass Instruments' this week.  Here is a fun page for the kids to review the instruments.  http://www.artsalive.ca/en/mus/instrumentlab/brass.html#trumpet 
Next week we will go on a Brass instrument scavenger hunt to review the Brass family.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/01/22/top-10-skills-children-learn-from-the-arts/

School (playlist)

Peter and the Wolf Movie Presentation

January 11, 2013

This week, the Preschool classes learned the song, I Know a Chicken and the movement song called the Body Rock.   The Kindergarten students learned a song called Sammy.  Sammy goes to the store to buy some bread for his father and instead of walking he moves in various ways, such as flying like a bird, swimming like a fish, crawling like a bug and hopping like a bunny.  

They also learned a song called, I know A Chicken, where they shook their shaky eggs.

The first grade learned some songs:  Let the Music Begin, Tideo and Tony Chestnut. In Tideo the students learned three rhythm patterns to go along with the song. 

The second grade also learned Tideo and listened to the Color Factory which is the musical they will be presenting for their Spring concert on April 30th.

Stewart Music Winter 2012-13

Happy New Year!  I hope everyone had a great holiday season.  We had a busy December and I wanted to thank the 2nd grade students who participated in the Holiday Band Concert on December 13th.  The students did an awesome job and we had a wonderful audience of family members for the evening concert. 

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