French and Music News
During the month of March, the Casa students learned about body parts and the five senses. During our group French circles, we enjoyed learning different songs and listening to stories about these topics.
To complete our Winter theme, the Grade 1 students enjoyed learning about the Winter Carnaval that takes place every year in February in Quebec City. The students created their own Bonhomme mask and completed different written and oral activities. After March break, some children reported that they went to a Maple Syrup Festival and enjoyed some “Tire (pronounced teere)” (Maple syrup toffee). Our Grade Ones were enthusiastic about the Carnaval, they all expressed the wish to go to Quebec City next year to celebrate with Bonhomme!
In March, our Casa students continued to practice reading and clapping rhythm patterns with the quarter and eighth notes and the quarter rest. The children had many opportunities to sing the scale up and down as their “Planes” prepared to take off to fly to amazing places! They also practiced clapping the names of their favourite animals and matching these names to the sound of the rhythm notes they know. Through this they discovered that, for example, horse, goat and dog are all “Ta” animals, “Kitty, donkey and panda, are “Titi” animals, and that the name of some animals, like grasshopper or ladybug, are made by combining “Ta” and “Titi” in different ways. We also learned the rhyme “Here is a Cup” and had lots of fun playing the singing game “As I Was Walking Down The Street”, in which every child got to choose his favourite instrument and played it to the beat of the song.
Grade 1 children learned about the life and work of Wolfang Amadeus Mozart. They were fascinated to discover that the well-known “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”, was a piece composed by him and that it has a fancy French name “Ah Vous Dirai-Je Maman”. They learned how to play it on the glockenspiel and they also had lots of fun playing rhythm games and body percussion patterns to the beat of the “Turkish March” . The children also started the repertoire of their Spring showcase: they started to learn the song”Oh What a Beautiful Morning” and I read to them the Cantata “The Little Brown Tulip Bulb”, which will also be part of their performance.
