Yellow Arrows Lesson 8
Parents attend next week
March is Spirit Month! Watch for prizes and surprises around the studio next week! Today your student was sent home with their LPM t-shirt to be worn next week to school and music class AND at the recital in May. More info coming in future parent links.
Spring Break is the week of March 17-23rd!
Registration for next semester begins March 1st! You’ll want to register here so you get your preferred time slot and you can keep that time clear when scheduling other extracurriculars. Your student is almost 2/3 done with LPM – WOW! Let’s help them finish Yellow Arrows strong so they are fully prepared for Purple Magic.
Celebrate Connections
A few ideas to make the alphabet pieces game more playful!
Alpha-frogger:
Pretend each alphabet foam piece is a tiny frog. Have your child choose an alphabet frog, then hop it across the keyboard helping froggie find all keys of that letter. These frogs don’t croak- each time the “frog” lands on one of her special lily pads, sing the letter (on pitch!).
Hiss:
Place one letter on the keyboard as a starter snake. Each player takes turns drawing a letter and checking to see if they can add it to the head or the tail with baby steps to make the snake longer. If not, start a new snake somewhere else on the keyboard. Anytime someone makes a snake with 8 or more segments, they get to remove it from the keyboard and keep the points (1 per segment)! Play until the pieces run out. It’s pretty cool if you are able to join 2 snakes by drawing the missing link between them, and win a really long snake! You might enjoy non-piano Hiss, too.
Silly Songs:
Have your child draw out 5-10 alphabet notes and line them up along the music stand. With her right hand in C position, play each note with the finger touching that key. If the note is a B, slide the thumb down to yellow position to reach it; if the note is an A, slide the hand into blue position to reach it. This might be a wacky song, or it might be something cool. If you like the tune, play it again!
Oh, When the Saints & Lullaby and Goodnight
D-O-W-N and that’s the DOWN-BEAT! The downbeat is the strong beat that tells us when to begin playing a song. Sometimes the downbeat is on the first word of a song, sometimes it is not. Ask your child what word the DOWNBEAT is on in both of these songs!
Tinga Layo:
Our toe-tapping donkey, dances a shaky, stylized rhythm called CALYPSO. See if you can hear this fun rhythm while singing along!
I am Robin Hood
It’s duet time! While your child plays the melody, you or a sibling can clap or pat drumbeats on lap in a repeated slug pattern. Then switch! Once your child is confidant playing the melody by themselves, invite them to pat their own leg while playing. Impressive harmony!
When listening to Don’t Put Your Trash encourage your child to do the actions to the part he hears during the harmony. It is also creative to change up the lyrics especially when encouraging chores: Don’t put your SOCKS (insert any noun) in my BEDROOM (insert any place) my bedroom’s full!
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!
