Toys Lesson 5

Dear mums and dads, you may be interested to know this...taken from the Teacher's guide of Imagine That curricula. Musical profile of an IT kid:

- are developing beat awareness
- can match beat to external sound source in non-locomotor ways
- enjoy the interactive nature of circle games
- are beginning to sing accurately in a limited range
- can differentiate between the singing and speaking voice
- are beginning to understand musical concepts such as loud/quiet, high/low, long/short, and fast/slow

We are already at lesson 5 of the curricula and the kids are doing well, each in their own way. The students that have been in IT level previously have really settled down and are growing steadily as independent learners. The newer ones are all doing so well too, despite being new to class....each and every one of them are participating so well.

We continue our lesson with using the already familiar Hello song to develop phrasing awareness in a song. The kids are going to use parts of their bodies and then drums to create awareness of this. We will continue using drums to tell a story of a spider....using rhythm patterns and different musical concepts to express the various characters and mood in the story. This activity is always a firm favourite with the kids, because it involves their sense of imagination, creativity, and music...all roll in to one.

We have been using our ears a lot these few lessons....listening to different types of drums, different instrument sounds that represent different toys, music with different sections and how we dance and play instruments to that....and we will continue with strengthening our auditory skills this week with listening and guessing ( without visual help) how a drum can be played.

A few kids requested for the Jack in the Box activity which ties in nicely to listening skills as well as we move our fingers and bodies according to the song. When do we pop and how do we flop...an acitivity that requires the whole body to be alert and moving.

We will introduce a new song Toembai this week. This is relatively a fast song, compared to Al Tambor and we are just going to start slow by getting acquainted with the beat of the song using the one bell jingle and exploring different ways we can make beat with the bells.

The Flower Drum song, the kids love this Chinese song and this is another great song to use to develop auditory skills as the kids have to listen to the part where the drums are introduced and repeated in the song.

I sincerely hope your kids have been learning and enjoying their music class as much as I have derived pleasure from teaching them. Hope this blog has been useful to you as an insight into what we do in class.

C'ya all this week in class!