Danse Macabre by Mr. Saint Saens

Students in first, second, and third grade have been listening to and learning about Danse Macabre by French composer Camille Saint Saens.   Danse Macabre is French for “Dance of the Dead.”  Perfect for the Halloween season!!  We have learned (or reviewed) that a composer is someone who makes up a song and writes it down using music notes.  We also discuss that music can tell a story, and that many songs have “themes” in them.  Danse Macabre, for us, has a “skeleton theme” and a “ghost theme.”   The ghost theme is smooth and soaring, like a ghost moaning and flying.  The skeleton theme is choppy and bumpy, like a skeleton’s rattling bones!  Sometimes the skeleton theme is even accompanied by a xylophone, to imitate the sound of bones.

In first and second grade, students listen to the song and place magnet-backed pieces onto a map of the piece as we listen.   In second and third grade, we watch a real orchestra playing the piece.  Third graders learned about the instruments of the orchestra last year, so it was lots of fun to identify the instruments by sound and sight!

 

 

Musical Jack-o-Lanterns as Note and Rest Review

Students in 3rd grade learned about half rests and whole rests, and reviewed the “real names” for many other music notes and rests.  Then they practiced drawing them by using them to create jack-o-lanterns.  On the back of each Jack-o-Lantern, students filled in a chart to show which four notes/rests they used, what the  name for each note or rest was, and how many beats each note or rest gets.