Prelude II Blog
Greetings, Prep 2 Families,
Thank you for another great week of music-making! Emily, Jazmine, and I are all having so much fun getting to know your kids, and are so impressed by their musical progress and enthusiasm for singing. Please continue to use the information below to reinforce practice and vocal development at home.
From Katie (Monday and Tuesday) and Jazmine (5:00 Thursday):
- We welcomed one another with a new partner dance, “Me and You,” which the kids really enjoyed, allowing them to greet several new partners in the room and show their awesome skills in highly rhythmic clapping, patting, and dancing!
- The children all sang solos in the African-American, Call and Response song, Telephone Song. They are all sounding strong and confident in their singing, and this song is becoming a rehearsal favorite! Please have your child teach it to you this week!
- The children took turns leading our vocal warm-ups in lots of exciting ways, including the Tuning Tree, Under the Sea Vocal Explorations, and Mama Made Me Mash My M and M’s.
- We learned a fun new canon, Rooster in the Stew. The children created fun movements for each phrase, and next week we will sing this song in 2-part harmony!
- We started a new concert song, Kokoleoko, which is about a rooster from Liberia! The children had a great time learning this lively song, understanding its playful message and they did a great job tracking their way through the 2-part score. Please have your child listen to and review this song this week.
- We reviewed rhythmic and melodic features of A Great Big Sea. The children are now singing the whole song, but should review the lyrics while listening at home this week.
- We also reviewed the rhythm and solfege for Manx Lullaby – and we discussed the important dynamics needed to make this a true lullaby. The singers should continue reviewing this song at home.
- We worked on our tahs, titis, tiritiris, quarter note rests with the rhythm dice and sticks, and sang through some homework sheets, which we will revist on the xylophones next week.
- We had a blast playing El Capitan, and a new game from African-American origins, Draw Me a Bucket of Water – if you have four people at home, have your child teach you this song and game!
From Emily (3:45 Thursday):
My overall focus for our class this week was to get the kids singing! They have been doing so well learning all the musicianship concepts I have been teaching them, so this week I wanted to hear their beautiful voices more loudly and clearly.
We started our class with the call and response song Telephone, which gives each child a chance to sing on her or his own. We followed that with a bumble bee warm up where the children extended into their high voices.
Then we did name rhythms, where the children suggested rhythmic patterns to match their names.
Last week, we learned the rhythm “tiritiri” which is 4 sixteenth notes in a quarter note beat. This week, the children identified that rhythm in a new song: Dance Josey. I taught the children the dance to go with it, where they all learned to swing a partner. To solidify all our rhythms, we used some Rhythm dice. Each child had 4 dice, and threw them to create a 4 beat pattern. Then they said the rhythmic pattern to the class, who then repeated it back to them.
Great Big Sea is one of our concert pieces for this spring, and we started learning it last week. This week, the children identified rhythms that they knew in the music and solidified their knowledge of the melody and words for the first section.
For some fun, we played the game Mouse, Mousie, which is a lot like Duck, Duck, Goose. The children then derived the solfège of the song, played it on xylophones and worked on writing it down on the staff.
Finally, we played one of their favorite games: We are Dancing in the Forest, affectionately known as the wolf game. We didn’t get to everyone, so next time, we’ll play it again!
Please make sure your children bring their folders each week so that they can look at their music as we work on these pieces. Part of Prep 2 is learning to look at and understand sheet music. It is also very helpful for the children to look at the music at home while listening to the youtube recordings I have sent in past week. I will repost them today so you have them.
Great Big Sea: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PoRV9dsx5Zk
Manx Lullaby: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMJQYM8QOPI
Ratlin’ Bog: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMX5jXFJNvw (this one is new this week!)