What's your child doing in music class?

Well, in addition to fire drills and earthquake drills,

--Kindergartners are exploring vocal production and "singing voices" (head voice) as contrasted with "talking voices" (chest voice). They've been singing the chorus of "This Land is Your Land". They've been patting the steady beat and playing a little changing-partners game called "Jump Jim Joe".

--First-graders have been playing steady beats, in series of 8, on handheld percussion instruments; they've also been drawing the beat. In order to prepare pitch-reading, they've been singing songs using only the pitches G and E. They are learning about "up" and "down" using a glockenspiel. They looked at a time line to see how long ago J. S. Bach lived, and they've begun learning to pronounce his name!

--Second-graders have been reviewing the pitches G and E; reviewing correct mallet technique and playing the tonebar instruments; writing rhythms; and learning to pronounce Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's name properly.

--Third-graders have also been reviewing G and E, plus A. They are using body percussion to echo and create musical phrases. When they play tonebars, what and when they play depends on which instrument they are playing. They're practicing and refining their reading, writing and performance of rhythms; and Beethoven's name has pronunciation issues, too.

--Fourth-graders have been reviewing the names of the treble clef's lines and spaces, improvising using body percussion, distinguishing the timbres of the tonebar instruments, performing in canon, and performing more intricate music on the tonebars.