This was another very unusual class. The story from the previous week was very strong in their minds, and they desperately wanted to continue it. That kind of intense student engagement is very hard for me to resist, so I relented, not having the least idea about where it would turn out. To further complicate matters, one student who was absent last week was present this week, so he had to be brought up to speed. Instead of my usual list of activities, here is a straight narrative of the day:<\/p>\n
We began with a quick reaction game: if you hear music, move with the feet; no music move with the hands. I long even phrases at first (8 beats of music, 8 beats of silence) and gradually worked it down to shorter patterns. My goal was to introduce some basic rhythm patterns in 4 that contain 1 beat rest. They were moderately successful at this, so I went to the board and notated them to see if they could distinguish between them. They are not quite ready for this, but they can reproduce them if I point in time to the rhythms.<\/p>\n
They suffered through all of this rather pedestrian teaching so they could get to what they really wanted to do: continue the story. We ended up spending most of our time trying to remember everything: which rhythms went with which characters; what the rhythms were, who was playing what.<\/p>\n
Each group was supposed to play as the others moved, and here I probably pushed a little too hard to get them to act like a sensitive orchestra. Give anybody an instrument and the first thing they want to do is explore it: make sound, see what it does, try this, try that\u2026 The last thing a kid wants to do is hold it silently and wait for something to start. I can get kids there, but I need to allow them time to discover first, and I did do that.<\/p>\n
All in all, our creative rhythms did not fall into place this time. But artistic creation is certainly like that. If nothing else they got to experience that knowing that we could try again another day.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Michael<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This was another very unusual class. The story from the previous week was very strong in their minds, and they desperately wanted to continue it. That kind of intense student engagement is very hard for me to resist, so I relented, not having the least idea about where it would turn out. To further complicate […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[128],"tags":[93,113,120],"class_list":["post-500","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dalcroze-reference","tag-1st-2nd-grade","tag-children","tag-single-class-documentation"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9ohMj-84","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":474,"url":"https:\/\/joviala.com\/jovialaworks\/7-9-dalcroze-11017\/","url_meta":{"origin":500,"position":0},"title":"7-9 Dalcroze: 1\/10\/17","author":"Michael Joviala","date":"January 12, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"Here is our first class of the New Year: If I move, students are still. When I stop, students move freely. Simple instructions (affectionately known as \u2018opposite day\u2019), but devilishly hard to execute for this age. The urge to mirror is very strong in us. I made my phrases in\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Dalcroze Reference"","block_context":{"text":"Dalcroze Reference","link":"https:\/\/joviala.com\/jovialaworks\/category\/dalcroze-reference\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10688,"url":"https:\/\/joviala.com\/jovialaworks\/1st-2nd-grade-skills-and-objectives-associated-with-rhythm-part-2-of-4\/","url_meta":{"origin":500,"position":1},"title":"1st-2nd Grade Dalcroze Skills and Experiences: Rhythm (Part 2 of 4)","author":"Michael Joviala","date":"September 6, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"Second in a series of posts describing what a typical class might cover during the year. Now we get to the heart of the matter. This is a formidable list, and not all that different from a list I might make for adult classes. Does this mean the children will\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Dalcroze Reference"","block_context":{"text":"Dalcroze Reference","link":"https:\/\/joviala.com\/jovialaworks\/category\/dalcroze-reference\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":482,"url":"https:\/\/joviala.com\/jovialaworks\/dalcroze-7-9-year-olds-2714\/","url_meta":{"origin":500,"position":2},"title":"Dalcroze: 7-9-Year-olds, 2\/7\/14","author":"Michael Joviala","date":"February 14, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"Back to my own observations... enjoy! \u00a0 Statue tag All students make a statue. One moves as long as she likes. When she stops, she makes the shape of one of the statues. That statue is free to move. This game is more fun when whoever is making someone else\u2019s\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Dalcroze Reference"","block_context":{"text":"Dalcroze Reference","link":"https:\/\/joviala.com\/jovialaworks\/category\/dalcroze-reference\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":486,"url":"https:\/\/joviala.com\/jovialaworks\/dalcroze-7-9-year-olds-2717\/","url_meta":{"origin":500,"position":3},"title":"Dalcroze: 7-9-Year-olds, 2\/14\/17","author":"Michael Joviala","date":"March 8, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"Here's what we did: Statue tag All students make a statue. One moves as long as she likes. When she stops, she makes the shape of one of the statues. That statue is free to move. This game is more fun when whoever is making someone else\u2019s shape does not\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Dalcroze Reference"","block_context":{"text":"Dalcroze Reference","link":"https:\/\/joviala.com\/jovialaworks\/category\/dalcroze-reference\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":463,"url":"https:\/\/joviala.com\/jovialaworks\/7-9-year-olds-11816\/","url_meta":{"origin":500,"position":4},"title":"7-9 Year-olds: 11\/8\/16","author":"Michael Joviala","date":"November 12, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Here's what we did this week... Move to the music; when the music stops, stop and clap 4 times. I had to tweak the directions to this until the music felt right to me. In the past, I have made it work with a signal (usually a high accented note\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Dalcroze Reference"","block_context":{"text":"Dalcroze Reference","link":"https:\/\/joviala.com\/jovialaworks\/category\/dalcroze-reference\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2026,"url":"https:\/\/joviala.com\/jovialaworks\/subtraction\/","url_meta":{"origin":500,"position":5},"title":"Subtraction","author":"Michael Joviala","date":"March 2, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"In the Drop-in Wednesday morning class series, I realized that I had been doing a mathematics run. The first week was about addition. The next was about division. So last week, I decided to try subtraction. (Can you guess what is coming this week?) We worked with a series of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Dalcroze Reference"","block_context":{"text":"Dalcroze Reference","link":"https:\/\/joviala.com\/jovialaworks\/category\/dalcroze-reference\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/joviala.com\/jovialaworks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/500","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/joviala.com\/jovialaworks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/joviala.com\/jovialaworks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joviala.com\/jovialaworks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joviala.com\/jovialaworks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=500"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/joviala.com\/jovialaworks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/500\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":501,"href":"https:\/\/joviala.com\/jovialaworks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/500\/revisions\/501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/joviala.com\/jovialaworks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joviala.com\/jovialaworks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joviala.com\/jovialaworks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}