As my kinders were working on their song for the holiday program, I noticed that they were having a hard time holding certain notes long enough. Since we have been working on starting, sustaining and stopping together (read lesson HERE), I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to put it into action! At first, […]

So what is a dot and why is it next to a note that we know? This is the question that inevitably comes up in one way or another when you are using sheet music. So here is a quick fun way to have your kids construct their knowledge and figure out just what that […]

Last time, the kinders created their silly sound compositions by choosing their sound lengths, recording them on paper and assigning a silly sound to each length (click HERE for the lesson). Today we took it a step farther and experimented with instruments and when to play. I took out tambourines at first and had the […]

It feels like it should be so far in the future, but December and our winter concerts are right around the corner!! This year will be my first with this school, so I am super excited and wanted to do something special. I also wanted to make sure that my kids had a hand in […]

We had so much fun in Kindergarten today!! As you know, we have been working on creating silly sounds for the length of a Note Knack (Click HERE for lesson). Last week we spoke about writing down our sound so that we can remember our sounds tomorrow. (It was a mini version of NK Lesson […]

I was looking through my Discovering Orff Book by Jane Frazee with Kent Kreuter and stumbled upon a sol mi version of One, Two, Tie My Shoe. I was quite excited, as I had just picked up a copy of the book from the library! I love it when it all comes together….with little effort!! […]

As promised, here are a few more ideas to engage your students with our “Queen, Queen Caroline” story! Today, after we whispered our names during the “fishy song”, we dug a little deeper and analyzed the 4 voices a bit. Which one was loud, and which one was soft? Which one made our voice go […]

An important skill to learn in music is to start, sing or play, and stop TOGETHER as a group. This isn’t always easy, as there is always those one or two singers/ players who aren’t watching us and come in late or keep playing when we have ended the piece! My hope is to conquer […]

What’s next? Kids have heard the story, they have named the 4 voices and they can say the chant easily. What can we do with this? For this class, I not only wanted them to remember and practice their 4 voices, but to also put them into context. So often we read how important it […]

In thinking about my first lesson for Kinders and First, I wanted to include my very favorite story that I tell to illustrate the four major voices ~ talking, whispering, shouting and singing. Some of you may remember this from a previous post, but for all of the new folks that have recently joined our […]