It's December In Our Town

It's December in our town...

A wonderful place to be...

It's December in our town...

Excitement, look and see

(From Roger Emerson's December In Our Town)

December at Porters Point is a time to explore observances and holidays that take place during the month and seek out musical opportunities to learn.  We do not celebrate holidays at our school, but we do look for cultural examples from all over the world to broaden our understanding of music.

Porters Point has a long standing tradition of holding a whole school Sing-Along in December.  This is viewed as an "assembly" as opposed to a concert.  Students and faculty gather in the multipurpose room and raise their voices in song, sometimes unaccompanied (a cappella), sometimes with pre-recordings, and sometimes adding instruments to the experience.

In the song, “African Noel”, students explore the tubano drums, always connecting to the beat. All students had a turn to play the drums during music class. At our sing-along, there were 12 tubanos and one student from each class played during this song.

Students sang songs about Christmas, Chanukah, Las Posadas, winter, and Kwanzaa.  

MELODIC EXPLORATION IN KINDERGARTEN MUSIC

Kindergarten students cannot wait to play instruments in Music Class.  Preparation for making music together takes time as students really need to listen to each other for that to happen.  It's amazing how motivated students become when they see the instruments out in the room!  Students have explored playing mallet instruments:  metallophones and xylophones.  They start with mallet technique using one hand, then both hands. Wrists must be relaxed!  Students discover just how hard (and soft) to play the bars.  The concept of high and low is easy on these instruments because the bars are different sizes.  To play an ascending line, they start at the "bottom" playing the bigger bars and work their way "up" to the smaller bars.  

Students also played Melody Bells.  At first students were asked to just look at the bells and tell what they noticed about them. They made predictions about what they might sound like when played.  While playing, students learned to start and stop and take turns.  We also discussed that instruments can be LOUD!!!  We all need to take care of ourselves to not hurt our ears.  I told students I sometimes wear earplugs when I go to concerts to protect my ears from extremely loud music.  And I can still hear the music!

In addition to melodic instruments, students have used rhythm sticks, triangles and shakers.  We recently made some "Pumpkin Stew" in music class -- of course, we just pretended to make stew as our music class is only 40 minutes!  

Pumpkin stew!  Pumpkin stew!  

What shall we put in the pumpkin stew?

Put it in the pot and stir it alot, 

and then we'll have some pumpkin stew!

Students played a triangle on the word "pumpkin" and then we added the playing of fruit and vegetable shakers on the question mark and followed up with putting them into the big pot, complete with a stir xylophone.

Check out a short video to see what students have been up to in Music Class this fall:

Improvising with a Five Note Scale

Today in Music class, Second Graders played with xylophones, glockenspiels and metallophones.  We learned about a five note scale called Pentatonic.  There is a pattern with the set up:  three bars, space, two bars, space, three bars, space, two bars.  Students figured out where the dividing line is between five bars. There is a "B" in this space, and we called that the "Boundary" line or "Boarder" line. This is so two students could improvise or experiment using the instrument at the same time. Check it out!