Red Balloons Lesson #13

Parents don’t come next week! Wow, it's always so fun when you come to class. When doing the CD and bell practice you may at times, feel it is unessential ‘busy work’ and one more ‘to do’ for you to accomplish that day. Keep in mind each LPM activity does have a purpose and that the key to successful musicianship and smarter kids are parents willing to take the time to do small and simple things daily in a fun playful way. These activities may seem insignificant, but the final product will astound you. Stay focused on the end goal and the play practice time will seem more meaningful.

In a Humble Manger This is a fun song to help kids understand how to keep a steady beat. We also talked about the term lullaby. Pull Away With this song we also participated in what a steady beat feels like and our ears heard the MI RE DO pattern! Each song helps us to internalize many facets of music. Let’s Play Music Today our ears heard layers of sound as we sang the MI RE DO and SOL SOL DO ending to “Let’s Play Music” at the same time. Singing in harmony helps us to sing in tune and eventually sing in parts. DO RE MI YES! WE READ MUSIC TODAY in our DO RE MI activity! So exciting! We are teaching our students to read by relationships, (steps, skips, leaps) not by note names. This is a more natural way to teach children to read music and it produces better sight readers because their brain isn’t bogged down with have to interpret the note names yet. Great Big Red Balloon Today we practiced visualizing the staff. In putting a note up on the staff and covering it, we let the children close their eyes and see it in their heads. If they can see it in their heads, they learn to internalize the staff and where the notes sit on the staff. Staff visualization ultimately results in learning to quickly read music.

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