Mrs. Mattson's Music Room: January 2011

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies!

The 2nd graders are currently studying "The Nutcracker Suite." We used handkerchiefs to make up our own interpretive dance for "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy." The kids love the fact that our Christmas program had sugar plum fairies in it as well! Cool!

Music Students "Surround the State in Song"

On October 9th, five Ely students spent the day in Minot preparing for their first honor choir concert. “Surround the State in Song” is a children’s choral festival held annually for 5th and 6th graders from around the state. Over 70 students took part in this year’s performance. At the same time they were singing, the exact same concert was also being performed in Grand Forks, Dickinson, and Bismarck. The children literally surrounded the state in song.

Congratulations on a job well done!

More pictures can be viewed on the ND American Choral Director’s Website: www.ndacda.com . Click on the “Surround the State in Song!” tab on the far left and view the photo album.

Monday, January 24, 2011

Composer's Corner

Several of the classes have been working on composition projects in class.

The 3rd graders used dots to represent ta's, ti-ti's, and tika-tika's in their "This is Why We Dot" compositions. When they were finished, they got to give their composition a name. Some of them were very creative!

The 6th graders composed their first songs ever! 1st they chose a famous quote (or made up their own) and then they added rhythms to the words. Next, they used the notes from the pentatonic scale and notated their songs on staff paper. For our final step, we went to the computer lab and notated our songs on the computer using MuseScore. The end product was a professional-looking song that could be performed for the class!