This weeks activities:
- Move to the music. At signal, stop and clap 4 times. At next signal, stop and pat knees 4 times. Continue to alternate at each signal.
- This is a continuation of the same game we played last week, with an added challenge: keeping track of a past event.
- 1 voice/2 voices: walk alone if you hear a single line melody, find a partner when the music changes to a melody with a second voice added in harmony.
- We built this up slowly to get used to finding partners (a different one every time). First, I simply called “Change.” Then I gave a verbal signal while playing the piano. Soon, I was able to take away the verbal signal. We added a quick reaction turn around after a while.
- Toss the Beanbag-scarf on the highest note of the sequence.
- I never actually gave the students instructions for this. I grafted the game onto a story (at their request) that I invented on the spot (they seem to be good at getting me to do this – it is another keeper). A forest full of hungry tigers (their suggestion) wakes to find magic balls of light next to them. They discover that by tossing them into the air, they are led to food. I used patterns of 4 quarter notes, changing the timing of the high note every so often.
- Hey Ho
- At the end of the story, I began to sing this round, which is actually about not having “food nor drink nor money” but still being “merry.” We’ll come back to it next week.
- Solfege: Glockenspiel Exploration
- I brought out a glockenspiel which has the notes arranged into the black and white formation on a piano. We used numbers to sing La Cloche from last week. We improvised call and response phrases. They were free to sing back any melody they liked, with or without numbers, most chose to experiment with numbers. A few are able to do this accurately, most not. If their numbers did not match what they were singing, I simply played back what their melody would have sounded like if they matched. I did this without comment as I do not want them to worry about ‘being right.’ This ability will develop on its own over time. All of the melodies made good musical sense apart from this. We were able to discuss the effect of ending on C, or not ending on C (C being ‘home’ in the key of C).
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