Cities! Lesson 11

Hello, hello, hello.....today is the 1st day of the year 2008. May this new year bring good health and much joy to all of you. Hope you all had a good holiday over Christmas and New Year. We as a family had a good time eating, catching up with old friends ( from all over the world!), and more eating coz the Christmas and New Year parties continue till this weekend! My kids don't start school till next Monday so we are all still in zombie mode in the Shiew household.

But full speed ahead for our music lessons. All classes are resumed and hope attendance of students will picked up too.

We have been practicing playing our resonator bars with one hands, alternate hands and both hands ( bilateral). This week we are going to review again the progress of each child as we sing and play our hello song while we play the bars with both hands in a steady beat. A bilateral movement is simultaneous movement of corresponding body parts, such as two hands or two feet.

We introduced the song Roll that Ball last week. This week, after becoming acquainted to the rhythm of the song, we will use our bodies and then later drums to move and to tap to the first beat of the verse. Learning all the different rhythms of the different songs from Cities these past few weeks develop awareness of the children to the varied rhythm patterns in songs. We will continue to do this right up to the last lesson.

The new song this week is I got a letter this Morning. Musically, this song is sung in a minor key which is not too common in children's music so it's good to expose them and also to encourage them to sing. We will also be learning about the postman and what he does in context with occupation of people in the city. It's going to be fun as the kids will get to mail their own 'letters'!

We will continue learning about jobs people do when we introduce Mr Cobbler to the kids, and learn the rhythm of how he raps his hammer when he mends shoes for little feet! And talking about mending shoe, we are going to have a Pass the Shoe singing game while we learn the concept of accelerando ( becoming faster)

Lastly, we will be taking a walk, run, tiptoe and maybe even flying around the city ( Here we come a walking) as we spot what other jobs that people do in the city. Children inherently love to move about and we use this to our advantage as we instruments to represent 'walking', 'running' and 'flying'. So we are using our eyes, our ears and our bodies ( integrated learning) when we participate in this activity.

Parent sharing time: I have put off this activity Mirror Dancing till later in the semester as I am concern it might be too difficult for the kids. This activity, as the title suggests, involves mirroring. The kids ( with your help) are going to be my mirror image. This activity encourages the kids to imitate and be aware of their bodies, and also to exhibit self control as we move in response to the music. Let's give this activity a go this week and fingers crossed!

See you all in class....