Music
F/1
What a delight to finally meet with our new prep students in Music over the last couple of days. I am extremely grateful to their year 1 peers, who have done a wonderful job of helping the new students get used to how the Music room works. Right now, our focus is learning all about the “language” of the Music room – knowing where is the “space”, recognising the “sit down music”, for example – as well as lots of creative movement and responding to music and sound. I was delighted with the way everyone responded in the musical statues activity – children were able to hear the changes in the music and changed their movements and expression as a result. A great start!
A number of the preps were keen to know when we will be using instruments. I already have some activities planned with hand held percussion, and they will be learning how to use the marimbas this term. There will also be a lot of singing, and Spanish!
2/3
These students certainly hit the ground running this year! This week we covered an entire lesson of singing, movement, improvisation, marimbas and ukulele using the gospel song Yonder Come Day. The aim will be to get everyone’s instrumental skills up to scratch so that they feel confident playing any instrument in the class, which in turn allows them to be more creative in improvisation and composition activities.
Recorder is an instrument we will be using in Music classes – each child will need to have their own recorder, which will be kept in a tub at school. A note will be coming about this – no need to worry just yet!
4/5/6
A great lesson this week to start the year. Chords will be an important part of their curriculum knowledge, so we kicked off the Music program with an activity using a pattern of notes to play on the marimba. You can see in the video that they were given the pattern and had to work out how it might be played and sound. Then, they were shown the song that it goes with – Dance Monkey – and they played along with it. Some students added some creative ideas and rhythms while they were playing the pattern, which is exactly the point!
4/5/6 students also started learning a song that they will be singing as a group for a performance later this term. In fact, all students will be learning the song! What was the song? Ask your child or maybe work it out from the hint – it was played at Mr Biden’s inauguration a few weeks ago! Stay tuned as we are planning for this to be very special.
Choir!
Started this week. Open to all students in years 3, 4, 5 and 6. We had a great turn out, and I was pleasantly surprised to hear that there were more students wanting to join! Please come along to our rehearsal next week.
Choir rehearsals are every Wednesday at 11am.
Band!
A number of students have already signed up for Band, whether as vocalists or instrumentalists. Band is open to students in years 4, 5 and 6.
Band rehearsals will start in a couple of weeks. We will advise of which day the rehearsals will be held.
Instrumental tuition!
As the school is now experiencing record enrolments, it is natural that we have record numbers expressing an interest in learning an instrument!
The procedure is very simple – contact the teacher directly to arrange lessons and payment. Lessons take place during class times, unless by special request.
There is a special program for beginner violin students in Prep and Year 1 (which we may temporarily open to Year 2 students who did not get an opportunity last year). I will send more information about this over the coming weeks.
Instrumental teacher details:
Rachel Jones (piano) racheljones2003@hotmail.com
Renee Bufton (violin) reneebufton@gmail.com, phone: 0402 307 370
Kyra (piano/keyboard, ukulele) and Pat Bath (Ukulele, bass guitar and drums) patrick_bath@yahoo.com phone: 0410 772 070 / 0404 395 078
Jackie Hu (recorder) phone 0422 143103