As you might have guessed, I am in full concert mode getting ready for our end of the year “presentation”, as my colleague and I call it. The second graders have chosen their rhythms, traced and colored them in and have written the symbols on a new sentence strip. We have already spoken about rests, but have not yet practiced them enough, so they used the sound symbols instead. Practicing what is written will be the perfect follow-up lesson for after the concert!

I had to clarify a couple of notes in an orange marker (blue would have been better but I did not have one handy). This again reiterates for the students why CLEAR notation is important and the role it plays in reading music. When kids are creating the music themselves, they get an opportunity to see where the glitches are and can see not only how to fix them, but also why something needs to be fixed in the first place!

I haven’t decided on instrumentation yet, as we are still in the “practice like crazy” stage; however, they are currently practicing on tables (which I am referring to as “table drums”) in order to get their technique down. We have talked about why it makes sense to keep their fingers hovering over the table and why using the upper half of their hand makes sense.

This helped a great deal in accuracy, but as always you get kids who are not as enthusiastic as you would you like and they don’t help the overall sound, SO I told them to use their imaginations….

Imagine you are professional musicians and people pay thousands of dollars to hear you perform. Then imagine coming out on stage wearing beautiful poofy dresses (as this class is made up of all girls) and gorgeous jewels..and you are looking perfect! (This is all said on a very uppity British accent for some reason)How would you sit? Where do your hands need to be, etc…

…and this worked!! The kids sat up and were so excited to perform! We had a blast and each time it sounded better and better! It all boils down to the art of practice with a little comedy thrown in for fun J

The next step now will be to have them write out a final draft so that I can copy it and send it home with each student at the end of the year! What a great memory it will be for them!!