Cities! Lesson 7

Hello folks.....I survived the one week of Vacation Bible School though some of you might have notice that my voice was a bit hoarse towards to end of last week. Well, the busyness continues with other Christmas projects for church and my own family. I told a friend that this year I plan to have a peaceful and quiet Christmas.....I hope...because it really has been too hectic these past few months for me. I really want to spend some time reflecting and looking into myself...and just center myself again after being tossed all over for too long.

I start with a quote:

Hungarian composer, folk music collector, and music educator Zoltan Kodaly has an important influence on the world of music education. He considered the voice to be the major instrument, and thought singing should therefore be the focus of much of early music education. His research led him to develop an approach that involves the organized presentation of pitches to develop the ear and singing voice. Bitonic ( sol -mi), tritonic ( sol -mi-la), tetratonic (sol-mi-la-do) and pentatonic(sol-mi-la-do-re) melodies are presented in sequence in Kindermusik Imagine That! to help children develop an awareness of intervals as the tonal building blocks of music.

1, 2, 3, Click! is a song that has a tetratonic melody. We will be singing to this song while we have fun taking photos of ourselves!

We will also be introducing the book Razupazu Toto for the first time. Razapazu travels around the world and takes photos of different types of artists. This book is a beautiful book as we get to learn about different cities, how they look like and what type of artists are there and what is involved in his or her work ( the book ties with the the activity before - 1,2,3, Click!)

We will reinforce Bonjour Mes Amis this week using the drum and mallets as we strike hello in french with our friends. Again we will tie this activity with Razupazu.

We will be introducing an assortment of metal instruments while playing to There's a little bell and at the same time learning about dynamics ( loud and quiet) and tempo ( slow and fast).

I quote again:

When children distinguish between a prominent ( foreground) sound and background sounds, they are practicing analytical listening.

The focus of the next activity is that - analytical listening - while we listen to the Tolling Bell. We will be talking about how the bell moves to a steady beat...using th metronome. Then we will move our bodies little and big tolling bells. This is an introduction to the kids on how to play using alternate hands on the resonator bars next week.

Parent sharing time: a time of parents and kids to shine as we pose like statues and get our photos taken! That's all I will reveal. Come see for yourself! I see you in class this week. Ciao!