Music News

Bam, snap, pat, clap – this month has been noisy! During April, our Casa students have been practicing rhythm, coordination, and memory with a game called “Table 7”, in which they had to learn a series of seven different patterns and tap them in order, keeping the beat and counting out loud. I invite you to ask them to teach you some of the patterns and try to join them in the fun! This month we have also started to sing again – which is very exciting. We now sing the attendance, and we also practice the scale and echo so-mi-la and mi-re-do intervals every class.

As part of our music literacy program, and also to celebrate Earth Day, the children explored classifying animals into the different rhythm notes/ rhythm patterns that are on the sound of their name. Now they know that a fish, a dog, or a sheep are ta animals (quarter notes), that lions, tigers, and turtles, sound like titi (eighth notes), and that animals with longer names, like dinosaurs, sea lions, or alligators, require that we combine ta and titis to be able to write their rhythm name.

In May we will explore motion as a response to sound. We will improvise big and small, and locomotor and non-locomotor movements as we try to be conscious of the multiple possibilities we have when we use our body as a vehicle of expression. We will learn what the components of a cantata are. The children will also practice performing, singing, and playing percussion instruments in a short music story The Little Brown Tulip Bulb.