Mr. William’s friend George has decided to visit the music room for the week! George looks for great behavior and hard work and travels wherever he may find it! George has a hidden talent: he plays multiple instruments! Can you count how many instruments George can play?
Students in fifth grade read biographies of famous composers and used the information to make a “head stone” for their assigned composer.
Students in first, second, and third grade have been listening to and learning about Danse Macabre by French composer Camille Saint Saens. We have learned (or reviewed) that a composer is someone who makes up a song and writes it down using music notes. In first and second grade, students listen to the song and place velcro-backed pieces onto a map of the piece. In third grade, students each have their own individual “board game” of the song, and they use a bingo chip to keep track of where we are in the piece as we listen. In second and third grade, we have watched a cool PBS cartoon made to go along with the piece, as well as a real orchestra playing the piece!
Students in Mrs. Hayne’s second grade class watch the orchestra play Danse Macabre “on the big screen” as we like to say. Students love to act out playing the different instruments while we watch. Students learn, in depth, about the instrument families and individual instruments of the orchestra in January of second grade.
First and second graders have been playing Monster Mash freeze dance these last few days. It is one of their favorite games and they love to go home and listen to the song!
First and second graders learned the song “Skin and Bones,” one of my FAVORITES because I get to scare the living daylights out of everyone! I sing the song very quietly and slowly with my guitar, getting quieter and quieter until I shout BOO at the end!! After we learned the song, we acted it out by choosing and old woman and someone to hide in the closet…. obviously this is a favorite activity during the year.
Emma, in first grade, playing the Old Woman
Mrs. Hayne’s second grade class singing and anxiously watching Jasmyne approach the closet!
Students in third grade played a game called “Pass the Pumpkin” and used xylophones, a rain stick, and the gong to accompany their singing! We sang using a minor sound. In music, “minor” means a haunting or sad sound. The opposite of minor is major.
Students in third and fourth grade are learning about swing music and singing the song “Pumpkin Jack” which is a song in a swing style! Swing music is a music that developed in America in the 1930s. Swing music uses a strong rhythm section of double bass and drums and features brass instruments such as trumpets and trombones and woodwind instruments such as saxophones. It also has a great beat to dance to, swing dancing is still popular today!
The West Elementary Music Blog! 