Weathers Lesson 4

Hi Hi everyone! Didn't we have lots of fun last week dancing like Native American Indians to Spirit of the Sun? Not only did we have fun but I know the kids and parents really listen to the rhythm of the song. Now I am sure each time you hear that song on your Home CD, you can differentiate the different sections of the song. Maybe you can 'test' yourself to see whether you remember the steps of the dance and practice it with your child at home!

This week, we will start our lesson in the kitchen! We are going to practice listening and learning to discriminate different sounds that we hear in the kitchen. This activity helps the kids develop attention skills through: the combined use of visual and aural stimuli; and subject matter that is familiar and meaningful to them.

In our busy, busy kitchen, we have lots of activities we can do. Some might be fast like the popping of popcorns; some might be slow like stirring some soup in a pot. We are going to learn about tempo : which is the rate of speed in which a musical composition is to be played or sung ( ie fast, slow, gradually fast and slow)

It has been too hot these past few days so we welcome the RAIN in our class. We are going to listen to two songs about rain - and we are going to take turns to draw the raindrops! The sounds of Pitter Patter and Drip Drip Drip Drop!

This activity is one of many ways to present the idea that sounds can be written down without the need for printing the letters of the alphabet. Understanding the sound/symbol relationship is a necessary building block in literacy development.

We are then extending what we draw to playing with instruments. The kids will get a chance to produce the sounds of rain with bells to the beat of Pitter Patter! How will we play if the rain is only a drizzle? What if it is a heavy rain? Again we are exploring the different tempo, which is the rate of speed of a composition.

Though it is raining outside, we are going out to play! But of course, in order not to get too wet, we have to dress up in our pretend rain accessories to dance in the rain! ( Poem: It's Raining!)

Now that we are all dressed up in our cool rain gear, we are going to dance in the rain to Uskudar! Remember this song from last week when we played to our rain shakers? This week we will explore the different sections of the song with a dance!

When the mummies and daddies come in, we will dance AGAIN to Uskudar but this time it will be done as a circle dance with lots of jiving and cool moves! If we dont run out of time, we will do some simple graphical notation while we explore different ways to play our rain shakers.

Soooooo.....I'm looking forward to seeing all of you this week! I'm sure we are going to be having loads of fun again in class. C'ya !