Carol of the Bells (November 21, 2014)

This week I decided to teach Mrs. Larson's class Carol of the Bells. They did so well last week with Pat-a-Pan, so I wanted to see how they would do with 2 parts. I simplified the harmony to just the melody plus a descending "bell" line. To incorporate parts of speech I did an "I spy" game where the children had to spy nouns, adjectives, and verbs in the words to the song. I circled each of the different kinds of parts of speech with a different color.

After teaching the words and the rhythms, we went out into the hallway to sing with the piano. I had already written the words on the whiteboard, so it was pretty easy to continue from where we left off. The children picked up the simple melodies very well, and they sounded beautiful! I am so proud of them! Afterwards, I had some kids who wanted to try playing the piano. So, while their classmates went out to recess, a few stayed behind so I could teach them some melodies from Carol of the Bells on the piano. I could tell that for most of them it was their first ever piano lesson. It was such an amazing experience to be able to introduce them to playing an instrument. I am amazed at all the variety of music education I get to do in this program. I just love this job!!

Pat-A-Pan (Nov 14)

Unfortunately, my camera has gone missing, so the pictures the children took during this visit won't be in this post :(

After my last visit I was excited to teach Mrs. Larson's class a song. We decided it would be fun for the children to start learning a Christmas song. I wanted to pick a carol that was less well known and would be simple to teach, so I chose the old French carol "Pat-a-Pan".

I gave brief historical background of the piece, then we began by reading the words together and identifying various parts of speech: nouns, verbs, and adjectives. Next, we practiced the rhythms in the song. Then, since one of the instruments we sing about is a flute (and I happen to be a flutist), I played my flute to show the melody to the class. Once the melody was established, we sang, created a drum part (which the children played on their desks) and I accompanied them on my flute. I was so impressed with the class. They sang so well! Then, for fun and application of grammar principles, we substituted nouns with children's names or Christmas objects, as well as some verbs and adjectives. The students really seemed to enjoy creating new words for this simple carol, especially when they got to put their own names in the song. This was so much fun! I loved every minute!

Here are some pictures!

First Day! (7 November 2014)

Today was my first day with Sherry Larson's 3rd grade class. It was so much fun! I was a little nervous because this is still so new for me, but Mrs. Larson was so encouraging and had some great ideas and suggestions. I really feel like I am going to learn a lot from her and her class.

For class today, I decided to teach about tempo and dynamics in conjunction with parts of speech. This worked well because often in music we use various adjectives, verbs, and even nouns to describe both of these aspects of music. To start, we used our desks as drums and used our hands to describe different animals, since they have been focusing on nouns this week. It was fun to experiment with how heavy a bear might sound or how gentle and quick a mouse could be.The children enjoyed picking animals to imitate

Next, I brought a recording of "In the Hall of the Mountain King" by Grieg. This piece shows very well dynamic and tempo contrasts since it starts very soft and slow, then by the end it is loud and almost frantically fast. I found a video of the Berlin Philharmonic performing so that the children could see an orchestra actually play. Unfortunately, however, the sound system wasn't working very well, so we really had to listen hard to hear the melody. Fortunately, though, the melody is very simple and easy to learn, so afterwards the children could sing the music. We sang together and tapped the beat on our desks. Then I invited any students who had a desire to come and lead the class with how fast or slow we would sing and tap. It was really fun to contrast and experiment with tempo and dynamics. The students seemed to really enjoy the activity, and they were all very involved. We were able, by the end, to really gain good unity with our rhythm, too.

After I taught, Mrs. Larson had the class sing a couple of songs they learned from a previous music teacher. They all sang so beautifully, and even sang some words they wrote themselves. This was so helpful for me to get some ideas for what kind of music to bring for the children to learn to sing. What a great first meeting!

Here's some pictures of my adorable 3rd graders! I already love them all! The top two pictures are the boys, and the bottom two are the girls.