A Trip to the Symphony

Each year, I take my 4th graders to the Children's Symphony Concert nearby. We spend a month studying all of the instruments of the orchestra and what they sound and look like. Then, we spend the next week or so studying the featured piece the orchestra will be performing. This year, it was "Peter and the Wolf." To prepare for the concert, we listened to "Peter and the Wolf", watched the movie, and then did a creative writing project based on the story.

The writing project was to tell the story of "Peter and the Wolf" from the wolf's point of view (to prepare, we read The True Story of the Three Little Pigs by Jon Scieszka). The students had to explain why the wolf ate the duck and why he should be freed from the zoo. Some of the papers were very persuasive. Some of their reasons included: The wolf was getting a drink of water and accidentally swallowed the duck, the wolf had bad eyesight and thought the duck was a scoop of ice cream, the wolf was saving the duck from the hunters by hiding him in his belly, and the duck had a terribly bossy girlfriend so the wolf ate him to save him from her complaining! It was great to include some writing in music class (and meet Standard 8: Relationships between music and lanuguage arts!).

After all of this prep, we were finally able to hear "Peter and the Wolf" performed by a live orchestra. We had front row seats (literally), which I normally wouldn't want at a concert, but for this it was great because the students got to see most of the instruments up close. The overall favorite part of the concert was watching the "crazy" conductor! Before they performed "Peter and the Wolf", they also played the "Theme from Spiderman." The kids loved this! Then they got to see a high school saxophonist perform with the orchestra after winning a local music contest. Seeing someone so young perform a difficult piece from memory was very inspiring.

As you can tell, we had a great time. The positive response from the kids was overwhelming. They now have a different view of the symphony and realize that it can be "cool." Let's hope they remember this next year when they can join band!

Nutcracker Museum

The 2nd Graders just finished studying "The Nutcracker Suite" by Peter Tchaikovsky. This year, students brought in any nutcrackers that they had at home and we created a nutcracker museum. We got quite a variety. One was from Germany, one was from Hawaii, one was received after a student attended an actual performance of the ballet, some were Christmas ornaments, and others represented favorite sports teams.We even got 2 metal nutcrackers that actually are used for cracking nuts. Everyone enjoyed looking at all the different kinds.  Here's a picture of our museum.

ABC Challenge

The Kindergarteners are working on internalizing the pitch (singing in their heads). To practice, we covered various letters of the alphabet with pom poms. Then, we had to sing through the song, but we couldn't sing the letters that we covered. We had to sing those letters in our heads. We started out covering only 1 letter at a time, but we eventually were able to cover 6 letters! We partnered up and challenged our partners to see how well they could do. It was so fun to walk around the room and hear them all singing independently.

The alphabet chart is kept in what I call a "lap pack". It is simply a clear plastic sleeve with various papers in it that I use for activities.Among some of the papers are: a large staff, the alphabet chart, a 16-beat composition grid, and a bumblebee listening map. The great thing about these is that the papers don't get ripped and you can write on them with erasable markers and re-use them over and over.

Guided Listening with Plates

The 6th graders are currently studying Rondo form. We did a guided listening activity from the book "Parachutes, Ribbons, and Scarves, Oh My!" to the "March" from The Nutcracker. We used plastic plates and did different actions to represent each section in the piece.