What a short month we had- especially those classes who have music on Thursdays and Fridays. I only saw them twice this month!!! Our composer of the month for November was Cecile Chaminade, a French composer and pianist, who lived from 1857-1944. Each grade listened to a different piece of music she composed, and spent a few minutes learning a bit about her life. Students were delighted to hear that Ms. Chaminade toured and played her piano pieces in 12 cities in the United States in 1908. |
First Grade- This was the month of the Turkey- "Bert" the turkey, that is. Students "helped Bert fly" with some vocal exploration to accompany our turkey's many attempts to fly. We also sang "Mister Turkey" and "I'm A Very Fine Turkey." We played games with "See Saw," "Apples, Peaches, Pears..." and "Doggie, Doggie." We also learned the "music way" to find a partner (or a group of 3 or 4), and used movement scarves to show high and low sounds, smooth and bumpy sounds, and fast and slow sounds with Chaminade's "Scarf Dance," and Copland's "The Red Pony." As this is our first year in music, we also got an early start preparing for the all school holiday sing-along in December.
Second Grade- "Bert" the turkey also made an appearance in second grade. The reason his name is Bert is because of this chant that we do. Second grade had some opportunities to accompany on Orff instruments in November, with "The Turkey," "Thanksgiving Dinner," and "Jambo." We are working on playing a bordun (2 hands play the same thing) gently and with the right technique. The games we played include "Let Us Chase the Squirrel," "Mother, Mother I Am Sick," and "Jump Jim Joe." Our Chaminade piece was from Air de Ballet. The recording we listened to was Cecile Chaminade playing her own piece, from a gramophone recording from 1901. That led to a brief discussion of Thomas Edison's phonograph invention and his lab in West Orange. The "reason to listen" was to identify the instrument playing, the tempo, dynamics, and melodic contour.
Third Grade- A canon, or round, is a type of song that can be sung in more than 1 part, each part starting at a different time. However, you can move in canon, too. That has been one of the themes of November. We did "Canon Trains," in which a leader came up with the movement for each train, and it rippled through each "car." We also sang "A Turkey Knocked at My Back Door," a very long canon. We sightread the rhythms, highlighted some solfege patterns and added instruments to that song. We are preparing to learn about sixteenth notes, and our 2 new pieces with 4 sounds on 1 beat are "Chicken on the Fencepost," and the (again) canon chant "Pumpkin Pie." Our Chaminade piece was "Automne," and we had some SQUILT time with it. (SQUILT stands for Super Quiet Un-Interrupted Listening Time.) Students each gave 1 "fact" about the piece ("it has both high and low notes," "the texture is thick," "the tempo is mostly slow" etc.). Also, we sang along with the melodic motive "Do Re Mi Sol, Mi Re Do" when it occurred in the melody.
Fourth Grade- In Chorus, we have been working hard on memorizing our pieces and singing together with a beautiful tone and blend. In general music, one focus for the month was the musical form of Theme and Variation. We listened to Mozart's "Theme and Variations on Ah, vous dirai-je Maman," and tried creating our own variation in groups, using the first phrase of "Row, row, row your boat." (Which I have found they are itching to play everytime we go to Orff instruments since that week!) Additionally, we worked on our sightreading skills by learning "Turkey in the Straw" and "No One's in the House But Dinah" with solfege and clapping the rhythms. After adding movement and Orff instruments to "Turkey in the Straw," each class did a mini-project in which they created a movement variation to the original dance, to reflect one of the variations we listened to, from Liberace's "Turkey in the Straw Variations." Our Chaminade piece was her "Concertino for Flute and Piano," with which we also had SQUILT time and discussed facts vs. opinions about the piece.