Can you believe we have reached the end of music classes? And that the school year is almost over?! I dearly wish we could have had this time to sing and make music together in person, but I am really looking forward to meeting you all next year! One final Music Listening piece for the school year. I thought this was a beautifully appropriate song to close us out. Pay special attention to the words Kermit is singing in this classic from the Muppets, "Rainbow Connection." Let's pretend we are giving our final performance of the year. Grab your parents and siblings if you want an audience as we sing and dance along to some of our favorite songs from this school year. Of course, we will start it all off with "Hello There! Speaking of rainbows, let us "Sing a Rainbow" together. Next is our fun and silly American folk song, "I Bought Me a Cat." Did you know that the great American composer created a version of this for vocal soloist and piano? Check it out if you get a chance: https://youtu.be/pfGWTiNN83E Now it is time to sing "Mariposita" in both English and Spanish. "Silver Moon Boat" is a lovely Chinese folk song- and in 3rd grade I will teach you to play it on the recorder next year in 3rd grade. We will sing it in English, and do our best to sing the Chinese words. Sing and dance along with "Shoo Fly!" Of course we can't forget the song "She'll Be Comin' Round the Mountain" that gave hope to slaves in the South. How about some great classic Disney songs? "Let's Go Fly a Kite" and "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah!" Let's conclude the singing portion of our performance with the great American patriotic song, "America!" And now we will finish our performance with our favorite dances, "Dinosaur Dance" and "Doin' the Penguin! Have a great summer, dear friends! I'll see you in September!
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Hello, my dears! Can you believe that we are almost finished with music for this school year?! Juts one more week left after this one. Let's start with listening to some beautiful music. This Csardas by Vittorio Monti is a beautiful piece of Romantic gypsy music performed on violin and piano. Let's begin singing. We will start, as always, with "Hello There!" and "The Solfege Song," followed by some Call & Response Solfege Practice We added some new songs last week. First up, let's sing "She'll Be Comin' Round the Mountain." We also added a fun Disney song, "Zip a Dee Doo Dah." A slightly different version of this song, but I think you will enjoy singing "The Whole World." I know you all love to dance, so let's do "The Dinosaur Dance!" Two of the greatest, and most diverse, musical geniuses of our time collaborated on an album together in 1992, and the result was amazing. Bobby McFerrin is an African-American jazz vocalist who can do amazing things with his voice. (Your parents probably know "Don't Worry, Be Happy" one of his best-known songs.) Yo-Yo Ma is a Chinese born cellist who can do amazing things on the cello. Watch them perform a fun version of "Hush Little Baby." (And if you enjoy that and want to listen to some more, "Flight of the Bumblebee" and "Vocalise" are amazing performances!) You know what comes next! "Hello There!," "The Solfege Song," and then some Call and Response Solfege Practice! I know that learning the Chinese words to "Silver Moon Boat" may have been tricky for many of you, so I wanted to give you another chance to work on it. (You can review the Pronunciation Guide if you need.) Time for some new songs! "She'll Be Comin' Round the Mountain" is an American Railroad song from the 1920s, although the original tune came from a hymn first published in 1899 called "When the Chariot Comes." It was sung by African-American slaves and is believed to be a song that gave clues for slaves to escape using the Underground Railroad. "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah" is a fun, upbeat song (that would probably have been our show closer.) It is originally from the Disney movie Song of the South from 1946. If you would like to see the original version, you can find it here. How is "America" coming along? Do you have it memorized yet? One of my favorite books about music, and a great introduction to the musical instruments, is "Zin, Zin, Zin, A Violin" by Lloyd Moss, with illustrations by Marjorie Priceman. Watch this read-along video, which includes clips of all the instruments playing "Ode to Joy." Which instrument is your favorite As promised, I have a new dance for you this week, to the song "Dinosaur Dance." This silly song has an A-B form, with a special little extra Coda at the end. Watch the introductory video to show you how to do the dance, and then we can dance it together! I would love to see videos of you doing it at home. Send them to [email protected]. I wanted to start this week with some music listening. I'm sure you are all quite familiar with the song "Let It Go!" from Frozen, but I bet you've never heard it played like this before! It is played by a group of (mostly) teenagers on both orchestra and traditional Chinese instruments. Blew me away! I think you know what comes next! Let's do our Welcome Song, "Hello There!" and sing "The Solfege Song!" Time to do some Call & Response singing using our Solfege skills (say that five times fast!) Remember, I will sing first and you will echo me. Before we start our singing time, I'd like to talk to you about PERCUSSION INSTRUMENTS. A percussion instrument is anything that we strike or hit to make a sound. In our music class, we have access to a lot of great percussion instruments, like drums, xylophones, egg shakers, triangles, and more. But right now, we are all at home and probably don't have things like that, which means we get to be creative! So look around the house and see what you can find. Here are some ideas I had for common household objects that could be used as percussion instruments:
Now that you have brainstormed, grab your instrument, whatever it might be and try playing steady beat with some of our songs. Or get extra creative and see if you can make up some fun rhythms that go along with the songs. (Make sure you ask Mom or Dad if it is OK to use it first!) You can watch this video for inspiration. Let's sing our beautiful Patriotic song, "America." Bet you have learned the words by heart! Although I am sure some of you speak Spanish, for many of us, learning the Spanish words to "Mariposita" may have been tricky, so I would like to give you the chance to sing it one more time, in Spanish and then in English. Isn't "Silver Moon Boat" a beautiful song? Let's refresh our memories by singing it in English again. Great job. Now let's see how we do with the same song in Chinese. Listen to the pronunciation guide a few times first, before you try to sing the whole song. Just do your best! "Shoo Fly" is such a fun song to sing. And it's even more fun to dance to! We will sing through it together before I teach you the dance and we perform it all together! Usually I would do this as a great big circle dance in class, but this version is fun too! Since we are in a dancing mood, let's close out our time with another dance. Let's see how well you remember the moves to "Can't Stop the Feeling!" I have a special new dance to teach you next week that goes with a song about dinosaurs! |
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