It's high "Performance Season" here at OWS! Coming up:
March 15--Fifth Grade "American Revolution"
April 3--Vista "Guys and Dolls"
April 19--Second Grade "Earth Day" show
April 19--Recorder Concert at OWS
April 26--Kindergarten Parade and Performances
May 11--Recorders play at University Bookstore, Bellevue
June 3--Glee Club concert
June 5--Choir concert
Monday, March 11, 2013
Tuesday, January 29, 2013
Audience Days
Kindergarten and Second Grade will have their Audience Day on Wednesday, January 30th.
First and Fourth Grades will have theirs on Thursday, January 31st.
Third Grade's will be Thursday, February 7th.
On their day, each class will compete for the Best Audience trophy! They will be an audience for their classmates' performances.
Children who take any kind of music lessons outside of my general music classes will be the performers; if they wish, they will have the opportunity to demonstrate, for their classmates, what their study and practice have so far enabled them to do. They should bring their instrument to school--unless it's piano. (Turns out I have one they can use.) They should also bring a copy of the music they plan to play.
To help kids remember to bring what they need, I have sent home green "reminder" slips about Audience Day (Third Grade will get their reminders on Tuesday, Feb. 5th.)
First and Fourth Grades will have theirs on Thursday, January 31st.
Third Grade's will be Thursday, February 7th.
On their day, each class will compete for the Best Audience trophy! They will be an audience for their classmates' performances.
Children who take any kind of music lessons outside of my general music classes will be the performers; if they wish, they will have the opportunity to demonstrate, for their classmates, what their study and practice have so far enabled them to do. They should bring their instrument to school--unless it's piano. (Turns out I have one they can use.) They should also bring a copy of the music they plan to play.
To help kids remember to bring what they need, I have sent home green "reminder" slips about Audience Day (Third Grade will get their reminders on Tuesday, Feb. 5th.)
Saturday, January 5, 2013
Hope to See You
January brings my favorite OWS tradition: the PA's Multicultural Event. Every year the committee outdo themselves providing fun and exciting opportunities to try out activities from specific areas of the world. This year's extravaganza, on Saturday, January 26th, will feature the cultures of Polynesia.
Students in Kindergarten through Fourth Grade have been practicing a canoeing song, "Tongo", to perform at the Event. Any student who's present at performance time--currently I believe that to be sometime between 6:00 and 6:45 p.m.--will be welcome to come forward and take part in the performance. I've posted the words just to the right of this post.
And fourth- through seventh-graders who are currently participating in the "Glee" after-school activity on Mondays have been preparing a Maori song, "Pokarekare Ana". It's a love song communally created by soldiers missing their wives and girlfriends in 1914 New Zealand. Only the students in "Glee" will be onstage for this one. Again, I believe it will be between 6 and 6:45.
Watch your "Quick Take"s for your opportunity to sign your family up for this splendid event. It's moved to a larger venue this year, so I hope they won't run out of space; but I intend to sign up the first moment I'm given a chance!
Tuesday, December 11, 2012
Nifty Concert for Kids on Saturday
A well-known Renaissance ensemble, The Baltimore Consort, is giving a Discovery Concert on Saturday, December 15th, called "Jump at My Cousin: Early Ballads and Dance Tunes". These were the top pop tunes of their day, and will be performed on voices, viols, flutes, recorder, krumhorn, lute, cittern, and pipes . . .plus local kid performers on harp, fiddles, and more! Here are details and a link:
Saturday, Dec. 15, 2012, 1:00 p.m.
Sand Point Community United Methodist Church
4710 NE 70th St, Seattle 98115
--free parking--
Tickets: $10, $5 Student/Child, $5 Seniors.
Link to Early Music Guild site
Saturday, Dec. 15, 2012, 1:00 p.m.
Sand Point Community United Methodist Church
4710 NE 70th St, Seattle 98115
--free parking--
Tickets: $10, $5 Student/Child, $5 Seniors.
Link to Early Music Guild site
Monday, December 10, 2012
Sleigh Rides
December is "Sleigh Ride" month in the music room!
Kindergartners listen to Leroy Anderson's beloved piece, finding the sounds of the sleigh bells, horses' hooves, whip, and whinny. Then they create and perform a score using the song "Jingle, Bells!" and some sleigh bells: some children perform the singers' line in the score, while others are following the line for the sleigh bells.
Fourth-graders also hear Anderson's "Sleigh Ride" numerous times, as they learn a challenging body-percussion piece to be performed along with it. This activity is a favorite of mine and of many of the kids as well.
And third- and fourth-grade recorder players have been learning an arrangement of "Jingle, Bells!" which we will perform several times on Wednesday the 12th. Starting at 12:30, we'll be touring the school and playing in the hallways and common areas.
Kindergartners listen to Leroy Anderson's beloved piece, finding the sounds of the sleigh bells, horses' hooves, whip, and whinny. Then they create and perform a score using the song "Jingle, Bells!" and some sleigh bells: some children perform the singers' line in the score, while others are following the line for the sleigh bells.
Fourth-graders also hear Anderson's "Sleigh Ride" numerous times, as they learn a challenging body-percussion piece to be performed along with it. This activity is a favorite of mine and of many of the kids as well.
And third- and fourth-grade recorder players have been learning an arrangement of "Jingle, Bells!" which we will perform several times on Wednesday the 12th. Starting at 12:30, we'll be touring the school and playing in the hallways and common areas.
Thursday, November 1, 2012
After-School Music
I offer several music opportunities in the after-school activities program. Students may be registered for these classes through the "Current Families" section of the OWS web site. A second trimester is beginning the week after Thanksgiving, and for it I am offering three classes:
CHOIR meets Wednesdays 3:30 to 4:30 in the music room. We learn mostly folk songs and sing them with recorded accompaniment, with attention to breathing, vocal production, and enunciation. The last class each trimester ends with a concert for parents, after which choristers take home their folders of lyrics and a cd of the recorded accompaniments. Lately most of the participants have tended to be in third grade or younger, but I choose songs which are good for singing at any age, and I welcome older singers.
EXTREME RECORDERS meets Tuesdays 3:30 to 4:40. It's for kids who want to play harder music than we do in our noontime recorder classes. Some participants play at a very high level, and others are less advanced; I provide parts of varying difficulty so that all can be challenged and have fun playing all kinds of music.
For the very first time, this second trimester I am offering a singing group only for older students (4th - 8th grades). This class has already filled. If I like the way it goes, I'll offer it again in the third trimester (after February break).
CHOIR meets Wednesdays 3:30 to 4:30 in the music room. We learn mostly folk songs and sing them with recorded accompaniment, with attention to breathing, vocal production, and enunciation. The last class each trimester ends with a concert for parents, after which choristers take home their folders of lyrics and a cd of the recorded accompaniments. Lately most of the participants have tended to be in third grade or younger, but I choose songs which are good for singing at any age, and I welcome older singers.
EXTREME RECORDERS meets Tuesdays 3:30 to 4:40. It's for kids who want to play harder music than we do in our noontime recorder classes. Some participants play at a very high level, and others are less advanced; I provide parts of varying difficulty so that all can be challenged and have fun playing all kinds of music.
For the very first time, this second trimester I am offering a singing group only for older students (4th - 8th grades). This class has already filled. If I like the way it goes, I'll offer it again in the third trimester (after February break).
Thursday, October 18, 2012
What's Up in Music Class?
Kindergartners have been doing the Chicken Dance and playing the singing game "Jump, Josie". They're singing "You're a Grand Old Flag", and also singing "Pudding on the Hill" and getting ready to play its scalewise passages on tonebar instruments. Yesterday they began listening to "The Hut of Baba Yaga" from Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition and showing its ABA form by turning around and around like the house, then sitting down to pantomime stirring a cauldron, and then turning around again.
First-graders are adding eighth notes ("ti-ti") to their rhythmic repertoire of quarter notes and rests. Next week we'll begin our study of Johann Sebastian Bach in earnest, with his Toccata in D Minor (often heard around Hallowe'en time!) for organ.
Second-graders have been doing a lot of singing! After hearing the story of how Francis Scott Key came to write the words, the children have learned where the melismae are (and are not!), so that they can sing our national anthem correctly. They've been working to detect the sensations in their throats from their vocal cords, and how the feeling of going up in pitch differs from the sensation of going down. And we've been applying those findings to help us sight-sing melodic fragments composed of G, E, and A.
Third-graders began their study of Beethoven by talking about the Age of Enlightenment. It was strange to think that the new respect for education which began at that time meant that education was not particularly highly valued in the previous age! They learned that the sound of mi-re-do is one that ends many songs, and they have been trying to find songs which end that way. Next week they will begin learning "This Pretty Planet", a song which Third Grade traditionally performs in a round with Fourth Grade a day or two before Thanksgiving.
Fourth-graders read rhythms which included syncopations and sixteenth notes this week in music class. Next week they will have an opportunity to use some of those rhythms as they improvise four-beat phrases on percussion instruments. Then they'll learn an old English song called "The Keeper", which the kids always enjoy for its call-and-response phrases while they are practicing reading two-part music and multiple verses.
First-graders are adding eighth notes ("ti-ti") to their rhythmic repertoire of quarter notes and rests. Next week we'll begin our study of Johann Sebastian Bach in earnest, with his Toccata in D Minor (often heard around Hallowe'en time!) for organ.
Second-graders have been doing a lot of singing! After hearing the story of how Francis Scott Key came to write the words, the children have learned where the melismae are (and are not!), so that they can sing our national anthem correctly. They've been working to detect the sensations in their throats from their vocal cords, and how the feeling of going up in pitch differs from the sensation of going down. And we've been applying those findings to help us sight-sing melodic fragments composed of G, E, and A.
Third-graders began their study of Beethoven by talking about the Age of Enlightenment. It was strange to think that the new respect for education which began at that time meant that education was not particularly highly valued in the previous age! They learned that the sound of mi-re-do is one that ends many songs, and they have been trying to find songs which end that way. Next week they will begin learning "This Pretty Planet", a song which Third Grade traditionally performs in a round with Fourth Grade a day or two before Thanksgiving.
Fourth-graders read rhythms which included syncopations and sixteenth notes this week in music class. Next week they will have an opportunity to use some of those rhythms as they improvise four-beat phrases on percussion instruments. Then they'll learn an old English song called "The Keeper", which the kids always enjoy for its call-and-response phrases while they are practicing reading two-part music and multiple verses.
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