Red Balloons Lesson 1
What a great class we had! Thanks moms & dads for coming and supporting your students. I can tell we are going to have a great year, great students and great consistent parents that make it happen! Thank you for singing along and doing the hand actions during class, this helps the students stay focused and builds a musical bond between you and your child. When they see that you enjoy music, they do too!
*Just a reminder for next week…
1. Parents don’t come this next week, but please send totes & workbooks. Just send your kids in WITH THEIR HOMEWORK and they will be ready 45 minutes later.
2. Remember in 1st year the practice process is all about fun and ongoing practice through play. Forget about the typical rigid “we are now practicing” approach to teaching children music. Put out the bells and let your child play with them. Listen to the music everyday in a natural way. (Bedtime, while in the car, etc.) Once a week sit down and do the theory homework. That’s it! It’s a piece of cake!
Melodic Patterns
Many activities in the first semester will concentrate on repetitions of certain melodic patterns. The first is MI-RE-DO. We will sing it, do solfege hand signs, play it on the bells, see the notes on the staff, and feel it with our full body! The songs this week that have this pattern in it are: Let’s Play Music, Red Balloon, DO RE MI, Three Blind Mice, Frog in the Middle.
Steady Beat
A steady beat is an essential part of becoming a complete musician. We learn to hear, feel, identify and then reproduce a steady beat with every song in Let’s Play Music, but it is specifically addressed this week in Tambourine Train and Echo Ed.
Minor 3rd Interval – helps to sing in tune
Hickety Pickety and Echo Ed are key pieces in learning to match pitch. For a child to play and create music they must be able to hear and then reproduce what was heard. Using the minor 3rd SOL MI and simple rhythmic variations we train the ear to identify what is being heard.
Click HERE to read why ear training is important and why it should be part of your child’s music education. Also, we’ve added the Magic Lamp Coloring book below. Print these two pages out and let your child color the characters as you discuss their favorite part about the puppet show. The B/W mini doc is the same puppets I gave out in class today – please assemble them and bring them next week.
For my convenience, I have preloaded content for the whole semester. I will update each future post with specific time-sensitive info before I send the link each week. If you choose to read ahead you might see details that don’t apply to your child’s class. For this reason I do not recommend reading ahead. Thank you!