1st grade started their Nutcracker unit for the month of December. We have been reading the story, listening and moving to the music and learning about the composer Mr. Tchaikovsky. The students have been helping me act out the story by adding sound effects and motions when they hear certain words or phrases. They have also been marching to the steady beat of the March of the Toy Soldiers.
So far we have listened to 5 of the movements. Yesterday we took some time to compare three different from The Land of Sweets (Arabian, Chinese and Russian Dances). Our next movement of the Nutcracker to study will be the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy. We will be learning the rhythm part from the A section to perform in class.
Kindergarten had the opportunity last week to play the barred Orff instruments. We had a mini "workshop" with them. They learned about the Glockenspiel, Metallophone and Xylophone. The students had a great time adding the instruments to a poem we learned. They were able to explore all the notes going up and down as well as create their own part at the end. Every student got to play each instrument. Today, our mystery instrument was the Trumpet and we learned that trumpets are in the Brass Family and play very forte (loud). Our song of the month, (per student request) is Jingle Bells. Each time, I ask the students what we can add to the performance of the song to make it more fun to sing. We have had some great additions so far, such as lifting our arms up on "hey" and changing the words "jingle bells" to the rhythm syllables "ti-ti ta" We have also started practicing moving with flow to the music. The students are connecting their singing to their movement (eurythmics) moving while singing and stopping movement when they stop singing.
Both groups have been practicing their solfege syllables (Do, Mi and Sol) and are really doing well. I can sing a pattern without the syllables and many students are able to sing it back to me with solfege syllables. This is very exciting to me because it shows me that they are internalizing the musical patterns, which is part of their "music vocabulary".
