Katie Gerber
Greetings, Prep 2 Families,
Thank you for another great week of music-making! The children are doing a great job learning their songs for the spring concert, and we are having so much fun dancing, playing and learning so many important musical concepts! The terms is off to a great start! Please continue to use the information below to reinforce practice and vocal development at home.
From Katie and Jazmine (and Laney, who subbed for Jazmine this week – thanks, Laney!):
- We welcomed one another with two of our favorite opening songs: How do you dootee and Welcome Bienvenidos
- We warmed up our voices in all sorts of fun ways: Snake on a Rock, Scarf Sounds, Solfege Echoes, and the Elevator Song
- We learned a new partner song, One Bottle of Pop, which they sang in 2-part harmony, with motions that demonstrated the time signature of 3/4. They sounded great!
- We reviewed the rhythm and solfege, and sang through all of Manx Lullaby. The children should continue listening and reviewing this song at home.
- We played a game set to Spanish text, called El Capitan, which encourages different improvised motions to maintain the steady beat whilst the children guess who the “captain” is. Have your child teach you the game – the song is attached!
- We played “123 Roll with Rhythm Dice” – the children loved rolling their musical dice and playing their rhythmic arrangement on the sticks!
- We danced the Penguin Dance!
- We ended by learning a short section of the rollicking sea shanty from Newfoundland, A Great Big Sea. Singers should listen to the song and follow along in their music.
- Please also listen to and review Hi Ho The Rattlin’ Bog! and This Shall Be For Music
- The children went home with a solfege worksheet – please bring back completed, next week!
From Emily:
We started our class with some solo singing with The Telephone Song, which is a call and response song where each child gets a chance to sing by her or himself. Below is a recording of this fun song.
The kids had a chance to lead our warm-ups this week by helping their classmates follow vocal shapes for vocal exploration. Then each child had a chance to create their own vocal exploration shapes.
The children practiced Sol and Mi in the songs Who has and Come Home All My Ducks and Geese. We then expanded our repertoire of notes to include La, in the song Snail, Snail. The children used xylophones to play the song, to see that La is a step higher than Sol, while Mi is a skip lower. Finally, they learned where La goes on the staff and each wrote a short composition on the staff using Sol, Mi and La. Each child went home with a worksheet where they can compose a song with Sol, Mi and La. Please encourage your child to do the worksheet this week, and bring it next week so we can share our compositions.
We reviewed the rhythms Ta and Titi in the song Hi Little Woodpecker, and then learned how to connect our rhythm stick notation with note heads to make quarter notes and eight notes.
At the end we sang Hi Ho The Rattlin’ Bog! while marching to the beat. They are really getting it down now!
Uniforms
On another note, we already have new families asking about uniforms for our spring recitals and concert, which is great – please order as soon as possible at Merry Mart Uniforms, as they tends to sell out of the Prep skirts fairly quickly. Singers will need to be in full Cantabile uniform at the May Spring Concert and Prep 2 Recitals. Please note that Prep 2 singers need to be wearing the red polo shirts with the Cantabile logo, and uniform black pants for boys, and skirts for girls.
Have a great weekend!
Katie, Jazmine, and Emily