Blue Bugs Lesson 8

Parents come next week – kids wear their LPM T-shirts!

Today your student was sent home with their LPM t-shirt to be worn next week to school & music class AND at the recital in May. Next week is Spirit Week! Click here for more info.

Spring Break is March 17th-23rd.

Waiting List
If you have a child you want to go through 1st year and aren’t on my waiting list, or you know someone who wants to do Let’s Play Music, text me and let me know their name and email address. I only have two small classes available, and they will fill up fast

Enrollment for Green Turtle Shells (LPM year 2) for FALL 2023 begins March 1st!

Remember, its first come first serve. If you have a sticky schedule next year, get registration done quickly! Let me know if you have any questions.

Should your child repeat 1st year?
There may be some of you are wondering whether your child should continue on to the 2nd year or not. Sometimes the four year olds need one more go around with the first year curriculum in order to solidify the skills and concepts required for 2nd year. The following behaviors will help you determine if this is a better alternative.

• Can’t sing and sign solfege at the same time.
• Doesn’t know the solfege signs.
• Doesn’t understand the concepts of a step, skip, or a leap.
• They don’t understand that their claps should match the syllables of the bug names.
• They have a hard time understanding any concept or skill when it’s presented to them.
• They have a hard time paying attention during the activities.

If your student is showing 3 or more of these signs it’s because, 1.) They are simply too young and need more time to physically develop or 2.) They haven’t had adequate practice/listening time or exposure to the concepts. You will need to determine if it’s 1 or 2. If you feel they haven’t had adequate exposure, you could possibly “play” through the summer and get them ready to move on to 2nd year. Spending more time with them practicing at home right now is key. The homework pages are very specifically designed to prepare your child for next year so if you aren’t using them effectively it will cause your child to struggle.

If you decide to repeat first year with me, you will need to let me know ASAP as I am sending out registration links to the people on my waiting list this week.

Are You Sleeping?

This song reinforces the solfeg hand signs. Very soon we’ll sing in a round, letting us hear multiple layers of music. Hearing music in our head and being able to stay on the part we are singing is a great skill for musicians to learn.

B-I-N-G-O

Who knew BINGO had such music concepts to learn from? When we sing it, we feel the quiet internal beats and learn to anticipate when to clap. It’s full of rich musical concepts.

Chords in Pieces – auditation (hear in your head)

As we sang “Chords in Pieces” we left out some of the chords and auditated them in our heads instead of singing them aloud. Again, much of the learning in 1st year is subconscious and unseen. The musical development that is happening to your little musician right now won’t be seen by the naked eye, but will be harvested down the road!

Bug Rhythms

We mixed up the order of the bugs and with no verbal cues we sang and clapped the bug rhythms. Your amazing kiddos were able to do “Can’t Bug Me” perfectly! Wow, they are learning so quickly.

It is easy to underestimate the significance of solfege. It helps us label something abstract like notes, uses whole body involvement, helps us understand scales and key signatures, aids in learning about intervals, helps us sight read/sing music, and so much more! Click here to read about the many reasons why we use solfege in Let’s Play Music!

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!