#MusicWithMini

Let's visit a grade I haven't shared about yet: 3rd! This years third graders are super ready, responsible, and respectful, and love to sing. Although I've been capitalizing on that as much as I can in the classroom, we have also been conquering the staff. We have been practicing learning our treble clef notes, lines and spaces. Some crazy line-sayings [EGBDF} we have include:

"Every Giraffe Buys Dragon Feet"

"Every Gorilla Bangs Dirty Fur"

"Every Goat Buys Doughnuts Fast"

This past week we have started talking about musical intervals (doing some aural training) and applying our note reading to actual music instruments. I was fortunate to inherit these xylophones that were left in a classroom closet for me. They have proved incredibly useful in my music classroom. They require a lot of structure and specific directions, however they provide endless opportunities for learning and LOTS of smiles and teamwork.

Here are some snapshots of the very beginnings of our 3rd graders reading music. I took the various leveled songs for Recorder Karate and have them work in pairs to play the songs on the xylophone. One person is the player, and the other is the music guider (who has to have special powers of reading music upside-down so they can guide their partner in where they are). So proud of these kids for working so hard and playing in their first "xylophone ensemble."

I don't know what it is about 2nd grade, but I just love them. I thought for sure that I loved them last year because we had a fabulous group of kids, but it turns out that I really love this years 2nd graders as well. It must be the age. Some magical maturity happens, you can begin to trust them just a bit more, and well, at least musically, there is A LOT that happens in 2nd grade!

One of the things that has kept me sane as a music teacher has been the discovery of our schools subscription of Music K-8. No, this is not a promotional blog post, this is me just stating that those songs have saved my life way too many times! Fortunately, they also produce a lot of songs that not only span across curriculum, but they also help teach music concepts too---like solfege!

My 2nd graders are preparing to perform the "Wacky Do-Re-Mi's" at the fall concert next week. It was a great opportunity to teach them many opportunities like

-Solfege hand signs

-Following along with a lead sheet

-High and low pitches and flipping from chest voice to head voice

It also was a great way for me to introduce them to some of the instruments they'll be using lots of this year, like the boomwhackers! Here are some of my 2nd grade classes as we played along with the Wacky Do-Re-Mi's. The youtube video can be found here (of course, they loved imitating the dancing mouse the best!)

Getting our "So's" ready to start the song!