New This Week -- Lesson 13

Lesson #13

1. The Hokey Pokey: Who can resist the hokey pokey? We realized that the ending is actually our "sol, la, ti, do" pattern that we've been learning. It was hiding all that time!

2. Play a Skip or Step up or down from a given note: With two notes on our magnet board we had each child play whether they went up or down and if they were a skip or step. The kiddos are really reading music!

3. Recognize Bug Rhythms in Songs: We went through a few familiar songs and picked out the bugs (rhythms) that we have learned. They were everywhere!

Now Available -- Online Registering

Hello out there! I'm thrilled to tell you all that online registering is now available! At the top of the page click on "register for a class" and then click to register for Sound Beginnings or a 1st year Let's Play Music class. After I receive your form I will contact you and confirm your spot. It's that easy! Classes are filling up quickly, so act soon if you want a spot. Please feel free to contact me if you have questions.

New This Week -- Lesson 12

Lesson #12

1. Baby Butterfly: This is a new take on an old favorite "Baby Bumblebee". This song incorporates our rhythmic bugs into the song to help us hear rhythmic patterns and then in a few weeks to identify rhythmic notation.

2. The Ants Go Marching: What a fabulous song for feeling that steady beat. The heavy beat helps us comprehend time and meter, which is a rather complex and abstract concept. We also reiterate our cadence pattern of sol, la, ti, do. We had a ball with this one today!

New This Week -- Lesson 11

Lesson #11

1. Understanding the term "harmony": We learned today that "harmony" is two different sounds that sound good together. On Top of Spaghetti was sung while playing our broken chords on the piano. This created harmony while we sang the melody.

We are really working now on reading music. These cute kiddos have gotten extremely good at recognizing steps, skips and leaps and whether they go up or down. We use the Dinosaur notation to re-enforce reading the notes on the staff. Our bugs are instilling rhythmic notation so that we can understand the time value of each note. With these two concepts combined we're well on our way! Nice job blue bugs!

New This Week -- Lesson 10

Lesson #10

1. Play a song on the bells: Today we played our Dinosaur Song on the bells. This means that our kiddos looked at the notation on the staff, read the music and then played it on their bells. What an amazing accomplishment for our little 4 and 5 year olds! Not only are we reading music but we used that skill to play the entire song! Way to go!

While this was the only new concept for today we worked hard on cementing other things that we have learned: clapping bug patterns with only the notation cards, learning the rhythmic pattern of Bingo, playing major and minor on the autoharp, audiating, and reviewing solfeg by applying it to new songs, just to name a few.