Red Balloons Lesson 5

Thanks for helping your kids practice! YOU are a vital part of your child’s music education. =)

You’ll notice that the bulk of new concepts and skills are presented on “parent days” like today. We want you to see how the activities are done so that you’ll know just what to do at home. So, be SURE to scroll to the bottom of the page to see the “What you need to know” video. If ever you have questions however, feel free to contact me.

Student behavior – I feel so lucky to be teaching such amazing students! You have brilliant, eager students that are so receptive at this age. I love teaching them and can’t wait to see them next week.

We had a lot of new stuff we learned today! Below are a few highlighted activities and their purpose.

May There Always Be Me

We taught the kids to feel their heartbeat and introduced the concept of keeping a steady beat. This is important when you’re teaching a child to internally feel the value of notes.

A-Hunting We Will Go

We identified the MI RE DO pattern and sang it independently. The solfeg patterns are important in training the ear. All the patterns we will learn in Let’s Play Music have a strong cadence pull to DO. When the ear hears these patterns over and over again they aurally can start predicting where the music is heading. Patterning plays a major role in the construction of music.

Chords in Pieces

We actually read music today! Well, our eyes followed a chord map, and we sang the broken chords. I’m feeling so smart….yeah!

Ding Dong, Ding Dong

Correctly imitate pitches is important in learning to sing in tune, which puts us on a path to becoming a complete musician.

The Staff

It was so fun to identify the 5 lines and 4 spaces on the staff today!! We are taking time to let the kids visually familiarize themselves with the single staff. We used our Red Balloon song to accomplish this!

We LOVE having our parents come to class on parent day. It was so much fun singing our lullaby and rocking back and forth feeling the steady beat of the music. Music is healing and can help us feel emotions. Music is powerful and every child needs music in their life. And not just for the reasons and benefits we normally think of as music educators.

Read Carson’s story and witness how the power of music aided in healing a traumatic event in his young life.

Here is the Parent Day “What you need to know” video:

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!