"La Bastringue" Canadian Folk Dance Grade 2

2nd graders finished up their Canadian studies in music by performing a Canadian Folk Dance called "La Bastringue." I simplified and adapted the original folk dance moves a bit, but the overall idea is the same!

2G/G performing "La Bastingue."

2S performing "La Bastingue"

Flight of the Bumblebee by KR

Kindergarten students learned about pollination and got to act out how bees pollinate flowers, to the piece "Flight of the Bumblebee" by Rimsky-Korsakov. Students flew in the middle of the circle when I said "fly," pretended to eat nectar from a flower when I said "pollinate," and went back into the beehive when I said "feed the kids!"

KR's bumblebee activity

Here is a cool visual representation of "Flight of the Bumblebee."

Shoo Fly Dance Grade 2

2nd graders learned a fun dance to the song "Shoo Fly" after figuring out the piece's form. Form is the way a piece of music is organized. Students learned words such as "intro," "interlude," "coda," and "fermata."

Below are the dance moves for the piece. I originally got the idea here and changed a few things.

2S doing the "Shoo Fly Dance"

Chicken on the Fence Post Grade 3

April is jazz appreciation month so 3rd graders learned about jazz history and a song that involves improvising (making music up on the spot). The song is called "Chicken on the Fence Post" and teaches students the quick 16th note rhythm of "beat-e-t-a".

I got the lesson idea and notation from the wonderful blog: bethsmusicnotesplus.com.

Chicken on the Fence Post with instruments. Students improvise on the words "fence post yeah!".

The next week students learned the game to "Chicken on the Fence Post". There are two circles moving in opposite directions and two foxes on the outside of the circle. When the song is over two sets of students raise their hands to let the foxes in (I squeezed two sets of hands before the song began), and the foxes must race through the maze to the middle to get the chicken stuffed animal. The game idea was found here.

This week students learned a clapping and cup routine to a chant called "Funky Chicken". The routine had its challenges, but was very rewarding to put all together. Plus we got to do silly funky chicken dances! I got the lesson idea here.

China Unit Grade 3

3rd graders have been studying China in their classrooms the past few weeks so I decided to do a China unit in music too!
Week 1 students learned a song called "The Jasmine Flower" and played an accompaniment on the orff barred instruments. We then talked about Chinese Zodiacs and played a zodiac movement game.

Week 2 we talked about the different aspects of the Chinese New Year, which was on February 19th, 2015. One of the popular traditions is to have dragon dancing on the streets on the 5th day of the Chinese New Year when people have to go back to work. We got to make our own dragon dance in class!

3P Dragon Dance. 

The song used is called "Chinese New Year" from Silver Burdett Making Music Grade 2.

3S Dragon Dance

Students then made Chinese New Year Compositions using different Chinese symbols and writing out the stick notation. The words they could choose from were dragon, lantern, coin, fan, and firecrackers. Find the composition templates in this very useful bundle here.

Week 3 class 3P learned a Chinese song and game to the song "Hao Peng You" and finished with a Chinese ribbon dance. Class 3S spent the entire class going more in depth with the ribbon dance and added instruments. 

The music used is called "Ribbon Dance" from Music Connection 2.5 and the movements were adapted from the routine in "Mallet Madness" to fit the music. The instrument parts were written by fellow music teacher Lindsay Wadleigh.

Ribbon Dance Routine

1. Large circles in front- 4m.

2. Right arm circles (forwards or backwards)- 2m.

3. Figure eights in the front-  4m.

4. Left arm circles (forwards or backwards) 2m.

5. Figure eights side to side. 4m.

6. Lassos just above head 2m.

7. Snakes (start with ribbon stick high, bring downward quickly zig-zagging) 4m.

8. Fire (ribbon stick pointing down, make very fast, small circles) 2m.

3P Ribbon Dance

3S Ribbon Dance with Instruments

Dr. Seuss Week: Horton Hears a Who

To celebrate "Read Across America" day our school decided to "Seussify" the school on Friday and have Dr. Seuss related activities. Each classroom also chose a book that they studied the week leading up to Dr. Seuss day. Music and Art's book was "Horton Hears a Who".

We started the week making a whole school mural lead by the wonderful school art teacher Mrs. Divis. The mural used each student's painted pink hands to represent the clovers in the clover field where Vlad Vladikoff drops the Whoville clover. Then Horton must search through millions of clovers until he finds his Whos again. On our mural he has just found them!

A slideshow of the mural-making process.

2nd and 3rd graders learned a dance I created to 'Slavonic Dances Op. 46, No. 8' by Antonin Dvořák. Students pretended to be Whos in Whoville and had to let Horton and the Jungle of Nool animals know that they were there. During the loud parts of the song students walked around the circle shouting "WE ARE HERE!" and playing egg shakers and sleigh bells. (We talked about how we want to use our "inside/fake shouting" voices so we don't hurt our vocal chords.) During the soft parts of the piece we silently took 3 steps in, twisted 3 times, then 3 steps out and twisted 3 times.

3S "We Are Here!" Dance

2S "We Are Here" Dance (after this video is when I decided to talk about not harming our vocal chords by actually shouting... at least Horton would have heard us! :-)  )

Kindergarten and first graders did their own version of a "We are Here" activity to music from the "Horton Hears a Who" movie. Students chanted "WE ARE HERE!" during the sung parts of the song, and pretended to play different instruments during the instrumental part. This was a 'follow the leader' dance/activity.

1R follow the leader "We are Here" activity.

Music we used for the K/1 activity.

Here are some pictures from my classroom for Dr. Seuss day.

My composer spotlight was transformed into an "Instruments of Whoville" display. Look at all those funky instruments they play so Horton and the other animals can hear them!

Our new composer spotlight is Ludwig Van "Who"thoven instead of Beethoven.

The beautiful clover field mural in the music/art hallway.

Ms. Moon as a Who and Mrs. West as The Grinch!

You can view more photos from the whole school here and the photo booth here.

Scott Joplin in 5th grade

5th graders have been studying composers through our "Composer Spotlight" this year. Since February is "African-American History Month" our composer spotlight is on the famous ragtime composer Scott Joplin.

Here are some videos we watched and discussed, of pieces by Scott Joplin:

Scott Joplin himself, on piano roll. Piano roll is a continuous roll of paper with holes punched into it.

A piano animation of the "Maple Leaf Rag".

Students then learned about a famous ragtime dance step called the "Castle Walk". We emphasized standing on our tiptoes and swaying.

Here are some of our 5th graders trying out the dance!

Nutcracker Activities

Grades K-2 and Grade 5 participated in Nutcracker activities in the month of January (there was just not enough time in December with snow days and the concert!)

Grades K-2 moved to the "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies" with scarves and fairy wings (from the Dollar Store). When the music began, students with fairy wings started dancing in the middle of the tile circle. They could then tap awake the sleeping fairy children around the circle. Once tapped the fairy children woke up and danced with their scarves.

Here's a clip of the Sugar Plum Fairy ballet dance we saw in class:

One of student's favorite Nutcracker activities was a parachute routine to the "Trepak" Russian Dance. I got the wonderful routine from here.

Grade 5B

Grade KS, where it's a little more difficult to keep a quiet voice in such a fun situation! :-)

Here is a visual I made of the parachute routine. This lesson is a great way to teach students about form: The structure/layout of a piece of music.

5th graders took the "Trepak" Russian Dance to the next level by learning and performing a fast paced cup routine.

Found on Pinterest Here

Grade 5B

Here's a clip of the Trepak Russian Dance we watched in class:

3S gets their jingle on

Mrs. Shattie's 3rd grade class got their "jingle on" today with Jingle Bells themed activities and some silly dances! What a fun class the week before winter break.

We started the class with this jingle bells circle dance (I can't remember where I got the dance idea from...)

Next we reviewed how to clap and count rhythms in stick notation. Then we applied this practice to a "Jingle Bells Flashcards" video. 

Students divided into two teams and we had a little friendly competition to see which color could play their rhythms more accurately. When the rhythm was outlined in red the rhythm sticks played, and when it was outlined in green the jingle bells played. Here's a video of their playing! 

We ended the class by filling in some mystery Christmas carols and doing two silly dance videos.

Source

Dance 1: The Santa Dance

Dance 2: Crazy Christmas: Just Dance

Happy Holidays! See you in the New Year.

Lion King: Arts Enrichment K-4

Credit- Raymondsanti

Students in grades K-4 began the Lion King unit this Monday during Arts Enrichment time. Arts Enrichment is an extra music/art time a week taught by the Art teacher Mrs. Divis and the music teacher Ms. Moon.

Photo Credit

The Lion King on Broadway Trailer

For the next two Mondays students will be learning a fun dance to "The Circle of Life" and making African necklaces. Students will wear the necklaces while showcasing "The Circle of Life" dance at an upcoming school assembly.

Photo by: Swiss.frog

After those two weeks students will explore The Lion King theme more through various art projects and music activities. Some of the music activity videos are shown below:

Hakuna Matata:

The Lion Sleeps Tonight Music Video

Lion Sleeps Tonight- Just Dance 2 Video

 I made two different arrangements of Lion Sleeps Tonight (and found the ukulele online) for grades 2-4, to align with what instruments they are learning in general music class. Grade 2 will learn the song on boomwhackers, grade 3 on the barred instruments, and grade 4 on the ukulele. I will also give a brief description of some common African instruments and add appropriate percussion parts (likely only one or two per grade of the percussion parts listed below).

Below is a video from a 2nd grade class of students playing the boomwhacker part and some African instruments.

Here is a 3rd grade class practicing the mallet accompaniment to "Lions Sleeps Tonight".

Although the Lion King takes place in Kenya, the theme of the unit opens up the wonderful opportunity to explore musical activities from all parts of Africa. Obwisana is a folk song from Ghana. Students will play a rock passing game while singing the song. 

The words of the song mean "The rock has crushed my hand, grandma." I found this description in a book I have: 

"A child singing this song is repeatedly receiving a message of security and comfort, even in the context of a phrase and game which tells of injury. The injured child can take comfort in the fact that he or she can turn to "Nana" for sympathy and assistance- the ever-present circle of relatives supports Ghanaian children and adults during times of misfortune and celebration both."

Che Che Koolay is also a folk song from Ghana. The words have been said by some to be nonsense words. But the movements to the song lean toward this translation: 

Hands on your head

Hands on your shoulders

Hands on your waist

Hands on your knees

Hands on your ankles

Hands on your ankles

Hands on your ankles, hey! 

Notation found here

Students will learn a dance similar to the popular American song, "Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes" to Che Che Koolay.

Unity Day Dance

October was national anti-bullying prevention month. The 4th and 5th grade chorus worked hard to learn the Unity Dance the past few weeks. Below is the performance at the DBS Unity assembly on October 24th. The staff surprised students by doing a flash mob of the dance.

 To learn more and download the song for free, click here.