Green Turtle Shells Lesson 12

PARENT DAY REMINDER!! Next week is Parent Day! You don’t want to miss this! Your kids really love to have their parents in class participating with them.
Nov. 10th Lesson 13 PARENT DAY

Nov. 17th Lesson 14

Saturday Dec. 1st Lesson 15 PARENT/STATION DAY (last day of the semester)

I noticed a HUGE difference in the student’s preparation today and it really made class go so much more smoothly. Thank you parents for all you do to help your children be successful! They are doing really well with their red, yellow, and blue chords, but they will need daily help and reinforcement on the fingering. Even kids who do it right one day will suddenly decide to do it differently the next day. This is one of the most important foundational habits we want them to cement this semester. Please don’t let them slip into a bad habit that will be nearly impossible to un-learn. Red chord and Blue chord use the fingers 1-3-5, and the yellow chord uses 1-2-5.

Mystery Bug

We played a new rhythm game called Mystery Bug. 3 separate rhythm cards are laid out on the 1st, 2nd, and 4th beat. The 3rd beat is empty and is the Mystery Bug. The entire 4 count measure is played and the students identified which rhythm (bug) was missing on the 3rd beat. Then we all counted and played the entire 4 count measure. You can play a variation of this at home by clapping different bugs and inviting your child to clap AND say what bug they heard. Ear training, rhythm training and internalizing the steady beat is happening all at once!

Brown Jug

The Brown Jug game is another fun activity to play at home with a parent or whole family. You just need a playground ball and a little bit of room to roll and catch. It is easier at first to chant “roll, catch” and then begin the song. This is a great way to emphasize how the hands and body must keep the beat while making music!

Echo Edna

This week Echo Edna placed various patterns of steps and skips on the board to sight read. She invited us to look at the board and think of two questions before we played the pattern. 1) Is it a step or skip? AND 2) Does it go up or down? Walking through both of these steps will help in all sight reading as well as the theory assignment this week.

With Thanksgiving just around the corner, we can find and play the Red, Blue and Yellow chords in 5 Fat Turkeys from last year!

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!