SWIS Lesson Plan 3

This week we will be concentrating on developing and highlighting the listening ear of your child.

We will strive to improve your child’s listening abilities through Music Listening activities. This week we will listen to “Silly Slides,” a recording that contains glissando sounds. The children will be asked to identify the sounds of different instruments (clarinet, trombone, slide whistle) playing glissandos. Listening discrimination is a valuable skill, one that can lead to the ability to make choices, to understand sound, and to appreciate beauty of sound.

We will also be listening to "This Old Man", a recording that contains sounds of trombone, piano, drum and bass. The kids will be encourage to listen to the different instruments and we will be discussing the different ways of producing sounds on these instruments.

The children will also be asked to identify the various rhythm pattern on a drum, ie walking, running, jumping, tip toeing and skipping. They will get a chance to listen and imitate the rhythm pattern with their hands, just be using their ears to listen ( I will beat the rhythm with the drum hidden behind a box!)

We will be introducing a new song, "Everything is just fine". Again, I will be using this song as a tool for the children to listen and discern the lyrics of the song. We will move and play instruments to this song, according to the various parts of the song.

We continue with the story of Josh and Katie using the sound effects of the slide whistle. Again, this is training the ear to discern the different ways a slide whistle can produce sounds and how we can use the sounds to relate to real life situations, in this case the different playground equipment...the swing, see saw and slide.

Lastly, the slide whistle. We will continue with the learning of graphic notation.

While listening to your Home CDs, ask your child simple questions such as “Do you hear a man singing or a child singing?,” “Is that music fast or slow?,” or “Do you recognize any instruments that are playing?” Encourage listening for preferences by asking such questions as “Do you like the sound of that song?,” or even “Why do you like that song?” It is never too early to start talking with your child about her preferences, encouraging her to make comparisons and talk about distinctions.