Weathers Lesson 7

Dear mums and dads, I know some of you read this blog diligently every week and I thank you for the positive feedback. Please write to me or call if you have any questions and I will be more than happy to answer them. I know it is often very busy after class to stop and chat with each one of you so please do contact me if you have any enquiries.

Now lesson 7....we are going to continue to learn about wind...how does it sound like, how does it moves things around us, how do we sign for the word wind, how do we make a vocal wind sound? We are going to read Michael Finnigan and discover what funny things happened to that poor man because of the wind. The kids will get to sing, and make funny sound effects of wind and just laugh along with their friends as they listen to this musical story together.

Last week we had fun walking the Windy Walk as we listen to instrumental and spoken cues and translate them to self controlled action of walking and being blown in the wind. This week we are going to take it one step further - to assume different characters as we take our windy walk. How does a king walk ( strut proudly)? What about a mummy who is carrying her shopping? What if we are elephants and we get blown in the wind? The children are getting an opportunity to express their creative selves and to use their imagination to project different movements with their bodies.

We survive our windy walk and end up in a friend's house singing and knocking to Who's that? This activity involves the intergration of several learned skills such as:

- sense of timing, sequencing and anticipation.
-interactions structured within a social setting.
- actions and motions that are described through language.

Within this song, you can also hear long ( who's that) and short ( tapping at the window, knocking at the door) musical notes and we will create an ensemble of short and long sounds with the drum and triangle to emphasize these sounds.

After visiting our friends, we invited them out to dance with the Weggis Dancing Game. We didn't manage to do it last week so we are definitely doing it this week. It is a legato ( smooth long sound) and staccato ( short detached sound) dancing and singing game. Weggis Song is a Swiss hiking song. The English translation of the text can be heard on the Home CD. Certain portions of the text represent Swiss yodeling, a form of communication prevalent in the mountains of Switzerland.

Righty ho....for more on parent sharing time, I will see you and your darling in class and we will discover what we have to do this week. For sure, I promise you, it will be FUN!

See you...see you...see you...see you...and you....