Red Balloons Lesson #8

Parents will come next week and tuition is due! We are having so much fun in class. I can’t believe how easily the kids understand the musical concepts we are learning. Remember, every song has a purpose. We aren’t just playing with barnyard animals and catching foxes to take up the time! Each activity we do has a musical skill and/or concept connected to it. As the teacher, I’m always striving to have fun with each activity, but making sure the kids feel the steady beat or hear the SOL SOL DO hiding in the last part of the song. Your student is subconsciously internalizing these things and they don’t even know it! Don’t you wish all learning could take place this way? I just love this curriculum!

Taking Baby Steps Our purpose here is to imitate rhythm and reinforcing the concept of lines and spaces on the staff. Identify Solfeg Patterns by Sound I threw both a MI RE DO and a SOL SOL DO into our Let’s Play Music song and your student got to identify which one I was singing. Those ears are getting smarter everyday! Puppet Show Today we performed the puppet show with our full bodies! We had fun learning the themes over the last 8 weeks. Next week we'll introduce a new puppet show. Ooooo Halloween This is a great song for teaching internal rhythm. It helps us feel the internal beat while no music is sounding so each student will develop their own "sense of time." Feeling a metronome in their head and body is important when developing the full musician inside!

Our world is full of rhythm. The waxing and waning of the moon, the ebb and flow of the tide, the very passage of time itself are all controlled by predictable rhythms. As humans, we spend nine months before birth listening to the rhythmic beating of our mother’s heart. The rest of our lives are lived out against the backdrop of our own rhythmic breathing. Our speech and movements are naturally rhythmic. Whether we are walking, running, swimming or dancing, rhythm permeates our lives to such an extent that we rarely think about it. It is virtually impossible to walk without some sense of rhythm. It is of no wonder then, that rhythm is often seen as the most important building block of music and that developing an accurate sense of rhythm is central to all music-making. Children love to move their bodies and this is one of the earliest musical skills they develop, swaying to the music, clapping and dancing. Simple activities and games involving dance and movement are therefore ideal as a starting point for this all important skill. Marching in time to music, drumming, clapping games and chanting rhymes are all quick and fun activities that young children will enjoy and gain instant gratification from. Also, parents if you have the time, read this article about how music improves babies brain responses. If you haven't done the Halloween activity, here it is again!

Try this FUN rhythmic exercise about Mosquitos!