Up Beat! 2nd Session

I am so happy to be meeting with my Up Beat! preschoolers again!  Our 2nd 10 week session of our preschool music program started on February 14th.  Naturally, many of our activities were Valentine's Day and love themed!

With a few new faces in our group, we started with or regular "Hello" song and then introduced all of the children with the song "Do You Know My Valentine" (sung to the tune of "Muffin Man").  We sang the song "Time for Music" and pointed to 8 valentine hearts to show our steady beat.

The children also love showing their steady beat with movement scarves and I was overjoyed when several of our new friends echoed some of the melodic patterns we were working on!  

The children loved guessing who I loved during the song "Love Somebody".  Let's see if you can guess one:  The one I love is red, with black spots and has 6 legs.... Love my ladybug, yes I do!

We read the books "The Ballad of Valentine" by Alison Jackson and "Skidamarink" by Jacqueline East, all before our "Good Bye" song.

This week the weatherman and I did not coordinate well, but I'm not going to complain!  The preschoolers engaged in many snow related activities including reading "When Winter Comes" by Nancy Van Laan and "Owl Moon" by Jane Yolen.  We danced and froze like snowflakes and even built a snowman out of musical instruments!  After "melting" our snowman, we used the instruments to work on our steady beat to the song "Snowman Drum" (aka "Aiken Drum").

Our favorite part of this week's lesson was using our new stretchy band!  The kids had so much fun showing steady beat motions and pulling back on the reins of our horse.  Woah!!!

Musical Pen Pal 3

Continuing on our Music Pen Pal journey, Mrs. Chroshinski's 2nd grade recently sent Donegal Primary another video!  I loved the creative process of designing this performance with the kids.  The students identified one of their favorite songs so far from this school year: Ghost of Tom.  I then challenged them to add harmony and movement to the song.  The students suggested using scarves to imitate ghostly motions and we turned a simple rhythmic ostinato into chordal harmony.  The pattern the students used for their harmony is known as a i-VII shift (1-7 shift).

The students gave suggestions for movements that were then combined into a choreographed piece.  We initially performed our chordal harmony on the xylophones, but the students suggested using boomwhackers instead and it really worked out well!

After practicing, taping, critiquing and re-taping, Mrs. C's class was ready to share the following video:

The students were very excited to get a video back from a 1st grade at DPS.  In the video, the students from DPS showed their knowledge of Call and Response form through the song "Down By The Bay."  Bainbridge and Mill Road students loved seeing that other schools sing the same songs we do.  Watching the video also reminded the students about the work we have done on Call and Response form.