Square One Art!

Our fabulous art teacher and our awesome PTO organize this amazing fundraiser every year called Square One Art.  Each student makes a piece of art and then they can order a variety of things with their artwork on it (shirts, keychains, etc.)  This year, I tried making one of my own! (top picture)  Mrs. Richardson had to help me with my xylophone, but I think it turned out pretty good!  I will definitely be buying something with the design on it.

This picture below is our Bel Canto Beacons Chorus Square One Art project!  I LOVE it so much...it has the name of every chorus member on it and can also be purchased on a t shirt or anything else that you want!  I'll definitely be getting one of these as well!

Rhythm Circle

 

First grade has been working hard on keeping a steady beat as we play our instruments, so we created this rhythm circle where they have to play along to the music and then all pass their instrument to the next person in the direction of the arrows.  It makes practice this skill interesting because they get to switch instruments as we go along and it also makes them work as a team!  Great job guys!

Vivaldi's Four Seasons

First graders have just finished up a unit on Vivaldi's Four Seasons, which is a series of songs that were written to sound like the seasons of the year.  We think the Baroque composer did a great job illustrating the seasons through music so to end the unit we listened to each movement and drew pictures of things that reminded us of that season as we were listening to it.

#1 - Spring
#2 - Summer
#3 - Autumn
#4 - Winter

 

Second Grade Musical

Second graders are learning about insects in science, so I thought it would be really cool for us to learn the musical, "Bugz!"  I am hoping to do this as a grade level performance sometime later in the year, but the date has not been set yet.  It is a super cute musical with fun songs and speaking parts.  The kids are doing a great job learning the songs so far and I think they really like it too!

Treble Clef Note Names!

  While my sweet fourth graders are anxiously awaiting the arrival of their recorders (woohoo!), we are practicing and reviewing note names for the lines and spaces of the treble clef.  We have a variety of ways we do this, from individual  practice on white boards to super fun interactive websites and games, but one of their favorites is the bean bag toss game.  The class is split into teams and each person throws a bean bag onto the staff and then they need to name the line or space that it lands on.  We usually play boys verses girls and the first team to say their answer gets the point for that round.

Thoughtful notes

Here are some very sweet notes from some fifth graders of mine....

 
  

Sometimes we just need a little "pick me up."  What we do as educators DOES matter in the lives of the children we teach!






  

Many "thank yous" to Ms. Pegarella's class for knowing how to make this music teacher smile!  I received a letter from every student in the class...I wish I could post them all.  All of them were incredible thoughtful and touched my heart so much!

So Much Fun in Kindergarten Music!

  Kindergarten classes are diving right into learning about all of the different types of instruments in the music room!  They are learning to play on their own specific sections of music by listening for certain cues while singing a song called "John the Rabbit."




  Here we have a student demonstrating the proper hand position for sticks.  Even this early in the year we stress proper technique for playing our instruments so that we aren't trying to reteach it later!


  Hand drums are probably the favorite instrument right now!  They can be played in a variety of different ways to create different sounds!