Toys Lesson 10

Hi folks, we have been having lots of fun learning about 'stars' - how they move, listening to songs about 'stars' and playing instruments to various rhythm patterns to those songs. This week we are going to do the last lesson in the 'boat' series and moving on the 'trains' next week.

I didn't get to do If I had a Big Blue Boat book yet which you have as part of the home materials and this week we will definitely do it. We will read it once over to get familiar with the story and then we will add instruments to produce the various sounds we can hear when we are in our big blue boat such as triangles for star, rubbing of sandblocks for sounds of rustling leaves. Kids will learn that an important element in music is to be able to use instruments to tell a story - just like composers use music to tell stories in opera.

Michael Row the Boat Ashore, another song which we can use to learn different rhythm pattern. Last week we did a similar activity using O Watch the Stars. This week, the kids are doing it independently - playing whole beat and half beat - while pretending to be rowing in their boats. It is a challenging activity for them but I have full confidence that they will be able to tap and splash according to beat. We will see during parent sharing time as I hope to be able to show you all this activity.

We are going to use coconuts (!) and shells (!) to perform an ensemble by the sea. It is going to be fun for the kids to be able to use objects they are familiar with to playalong to steady beat and producing an orchestra of beach sounds.

Out Here on the Sea, another familiar and favourite activity of the kids....we will have a underwater treasure hunt as we look for creatures under the sea while we sing and compose to this familiar song! This activity provides an opportunity for kids to compose and to develop sustain focus and attention span as they look for creatures under the sea.

It's been a while since we last have a synchronized circle dance and thats what we are going to do this week to Toembai. As I have shared in class before, doing a synchronized dance is a fun and easy way for kids ( and parents) to appreciate and develop a listening ear to different sections in a piece of music.

Well my dears.....I see you in class then. Have a good Merdeka holiday this friday. May God Bless Malaysia with many more years of peace living in harmony and unity.......

Toys Lesson 9

Hi folks, sorry for being late again this week....very busy, away on holiday (hehe!) Actually we were away at church camp in Penang. Ah, the food and the beach....always love Penang and it was great to be there soaking up the atmosphere with friends, and getting much inspiration for lesson plan especially now that we are at the 'boat and sea' part of the curricula!

We are going to concentrate on humming this week. Humming has two specific benefits, according to Jean Westerman Gregg, speech language pathologist with a specialty in voice therapy. Humming over a period of time increases the strength of the fundamental accoustic spectrum, therefore affecting the quality of the singing voice. Also, over an extended period of time the vibration sensation of humming seems to increase the carrying power of voice resulting in more volume and less effort. (From "Song and Speech: What Humming Can do for you")

Using the familiar Twinkle twinkle little star song, we are going to do instrument exploration of metal instruments. Through instrument exploration a child can learn many musical concepts such as timbre, pitch, vibration rhythm, tonal relationships and melody.

The kids are now very familiar with the song A sailor went out to sea, sea, sea. This week we are going to use the song to play an ensemble; ie performing together as a group, taking turns at various sections of the song. The focus of this activity is to further enhance the learning of the rhythm pattern of this song, developing taking turns and deriving enjoyment from playing as a group.

We are going to do some star dancing with our bodies to Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy. We are going to learn about Tchaikovsky and the Nutcracker where the song is taken from. This Russian composer was best known for his ballets and symphonies. In this curricula, we gave the opportunity to hear several Tchaikovsky selections: Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy, Waltz of the Flowers, Dance of the Reed Flutes and Chinese Dance. These pieces are all taken from the Nutcracker Suite Op. 71a, the orchestral suite drawn from the well-known ballet, The Nutcracker.

Lastly, we will use the song O Watch the Stars to learn about beats in music - what is a quarter beat and a half beat, and a whole beat.

I will see you all in class this week. Looking forward to a fun and learning time together!

Toys Lesson 8

Dear mums and dads, so sorry for being late this week with the lesson plan. I just got bogged down with too many activities and too little time. I already have the lesson plan in hand weeks ago but just couldnt find the time to sit down and put it on the blog.

We are going to start the lesson with drums....again using this versatile and fun percussion instrument to practice and develop listening skills and strengthening rhythm play. I know the kids love the sound of the drums and when all the kids play together in the same rhythm, it is indeed a enjoyable and awesome experience for them. This is one of the benefit in having a group music class. Apart from the social aspect, the joy of making music together as a group is definitely much greater for children in this age range. I am sure this is true even for adults!

We are going to Build me a boat again this week but we will have more 'tools' this time around. Rhythm sticks to hammer and saw, sandblocks to sand, bells to screw and colourful scarves for painting stripes and dots! We are going to have a whale of a time building our boat with our imagination and pretend play.

After building the boat, of course we then have to sail out to sea, sea, sea. Let us see how well the kids can remember to move in their boats ( hoops) to the rhythm of the sea, sea, sea.

We are then going to learn about different types of boats: sail boats, motorboats, and row boats. How can we convert our hoops into different types of boat? How can we row, row our boats; or sail, sail our boats; or vroom, vroom our boats?

When we are Out Here on the Sea, we have to use our eyes to find different sea creatures and compare them to the pictures I have in my sea creatures book, an exercise of learning about sea creatures and the ability to compare and contrast visually.

Then after a hard day work out in the sea, we are going to lie down and watch the stars at night while we use our ears for some analytical listening.

A familiar and much loved song, Twinkle, twinkle little star, will close our lesson this week. I hope you remember the torchlights! And I almost forgot, I BIG salute to all of you for bringing in all those home made boats! We had boats made out from paper, plastic, banana ( yes!!!), coconuts (!!!!)...we had sail boats, row boats, boats with roof, boats with chimney....it was wonderful to see how imaginative the kids and the parents. THANK YOU!

See you this week my dears......

Toys Lesson 7

Ahoy there! As you can guess from my greeting, we are still sailing into this week with our sea travels adventure!

We will have a mixture of old and new activities as usual. The old activities for reinforcement and the new to keep the interest going. We will be introducing the sea sounds listening puzzle this week as a active listening activity. This Listening puzzle helps the kids develop attention skills through:

- the combined use of visual and aural stimuli
- subject matter that is familiar and meaningful to them
- the use of a novel and playful format to convey the information

We will also introduce a new book If I had a Big Blue Boat, a boat that emphasize on sounds and sights found out on the sea. Reading together:

- fosters love of reading
- provides predictability
- introduce new words
- expands understanding of story structures
- promotes critical thinking
- encourages language play and creative expression

A personal note: there is nothing more important you can do with a child at this age than to read to him/her. Not only for all the benefits above, it also foster bonding between parent and child. I know that one of the highlights of my day is to tuck in bed with my kids and read to them. And we talked and talked...about all sorts of things. Today my son said to me...mummy, I need more hands to tell you how much I love you. I don't want any other mummy except you, even if the other mummy gives me sweets and lollipops, and allow me to watch TV all the time! :-) Now that is more precious than anything in the world......

Coming back to lesson plan, we will also be incorporating instruments in our story...which instrument can produce the sounds we can hear in the story? How do we make the sound of the rustle of leaves, or the flippish leap of fish? Ahhh....it will be interesting to get the kids to produce their musical story to this book.

I can't wait to see the home made boats you guys will be bringing to class. I know, from the home made instruments the last time, you mums and dads out there take the homework seriously and I truly appreciate the effort you take which helps make the class activities so much more enjoyable, interesting and meaningful. Let's see how our home made boats weather the storms in the class!

This week, we will be doing the Boatman's Dance during parent sharing time. Get ready our sea legs to dance together! See you in class! So long.....

Next week: Please bring a torchlight for each child. We need it during parent sharing time.

Toys Lesson 6

Dear parents, hope that you had a good week. I can't believe it's almost August! Didn't we just celebrate Christmas not that long ago? :-) Teaching Kindermusik has been one of the best thing that has happened to me. Apart from the enjoyement I derived out of being with the kids, I have had the privilege of watching them grow; physically, socially and musically. Some of my Our Time kids are now doing Young Child and as I reflect back on the time they first started Kindermusik, I am just amazed at how much they have grown. I know I only blog about My Imagine That classes, and it's because of time constraints, but I just want to say how proud I am of the kids and with the current classes of IT kids, I can see the potential in them as they continue with the program.

Ahoy there matey....we are moving into the boat and sea part of the curricula this week. We are going to be experiencing adventures out in the sea for these next few weeks. But of course before we venture out of the habour, we need a sturdy boat and we are going to build one this week in Build me a Boat. We are going to disover the many tools we need in building a boat; hammer, saw, screwdriver, sanding block and a paintbrush. And we can have all these tools in the rhythm stick (!) as we move to a steady beat while exploring the different ways we can use our tools.

Now that we have build our boat, it's time to go sail away in the sea on our Big Blue Boat. How does it feel to sail on a boat? How do we move when the sea is calm? What if there is a storm and we have choppy waves? What is the rudder for?What is the sail for? What is an anchor? How do the sail ( scarves) look like when the sea is calm, and how does it look like when the strong wind blows?

Out here on the Sea - what can we see while we are out on the sea? We are encouraging singing ability and speech here as the kids looking and looking out here on the sea and giving me suggestions on what they can see and how it moves. They are using a multitude of skills here....imagination and creativity, singing and language development, confidence to give ideas and learning to accept each other's ideas and working together as a group.

We are going to be A sailor went to sea, sea, sea and learn the rhythmic chant. Again, as in many songs in this curricula, this activity promotes learning and listening of different rhythm patterns. Its going to be fun as we get into our hoops ( oops...i mean boats) and sway and move like the sailor who went out to sea, sea, sea!

Righty ho....I'll see you and your kids in class this week....bye!

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!

Toys Lesson 4

Wooohooooo......boy, was I impressed with the home made musical instruments your kids brought to class! Some of you spent a lot of time making it and I am deeply aprreciative of your efforts. The kids were so proud to show their instruments and they even got to share and take turns playing with the instruments their friends brought to class. Hopefully I will be able to put up a few pictures of the instruments the kids made and you can see for yourself. One of the kid even named his instrument. Bravo!

This week we are going to use the our bodies to play a steady beat to the Hello song. Can we pat our knees to a steady beat? Can we alternate patting knees and clapping hands to a steady beat? How about patting knees, clapping hands and touching heads? In this activity, we are promoting not only development of steady beat but also a practice in sequencing.

How can we go to the Toy Shop this week? With our rhythm sticks, we can walk, run, jump and roll....and even row boats and drive cars with horns. There are a myriad of ways in which we can use the rhythm sticks as instruments for pretend and imaginative play. I won't be surprise if the kids give me even more suggestions during class time!

In the Toy Shop this week, we will have to use our EARS to listen to the toys we have. Can it be a toy frog ( using a guiro) or maybe a toy clock ( metronome). We might even find a toy bike and a toy train! Maybe even the doundoun drum or the pow wow drum....one never know what exciting discovery we have in our toy shop. If we 'open' our ears, we will hear lots of interesting sounds.....

We ran out of time to the I am a top activity so we will do it this week. I know the kids have been asking to do this as they had so much fun the last time winding up the tops and seeing it spin and spin....This week, we are all going to be spinning tops and I'll get to 'wind' up the kids with my special magic key!

We continue our lesson about different types of drums from different countries. Last week, we played and learned about the chinese drum. This week, we will get to play with Mr Snare Drum....I know the kids will be terribly excited at the sound this drum can make and we are going to have a terrific time marching with the drum!

We will play our drums to Al Tambor. This week, we will only use the drums. This activity promotes listening to various sections in a song, steady beat and exploring different ways to play the drums.

Lastly, we will have another circle dance....the surprise activity awaits you when you come to class!