Reminder - No class next week for Spring Break! I'll see your kids in class again on March 24th

Class was fun this week! We noticed a lot of major and minor sounds, sang the dinosaur song while noticing the skips and baby steps, identified baby steps and skips on the staff and played them on the bells, and saw a new puppet show. Phew! Thank you for joining your kids for this lesson and learning with them.

As I mentioned in last week's email, March is Let's Play Music Spirit Month and the Let's Play Music company is hosting weekly prizes all month long on their Instagram @letsplaymusic_official. Today we celebrated our Let's Play Music Spirit in class and I introduced a studio contest! Fill out the Contest Google Form to enter the contest. There are four fields you can fill in and each one is an entry to the contest. You have until Friday March 28th to enter and I'll announce the winner on Monday March 31st. The prize is a Yoto Mini mp3 Player and a card preloaded with the album soundtrack for the LPM semester your child is in right now!! PLUS two cards from the Yoto Classical Collection! 

I am so grateful to each of you for being a part of my studio! I love teaching your kids and I feel so lucky to teach this incredible program to them. I love Let's Play Music because it ingeniously teaches music to in an age-appropriate way infusing play, fun, confidence building, and so much more. Keep feeling and sharing the love of Let's Play Music this month and share that love with your friends. Most people find out about Let's Play Music from their friends so please reach out to friends you feel would love this program. Below you'll find info on the studio contest as well as info on the national contest. (Click the picture!)

On Top of Spaghetti

Learning to hear chord progressions as well as each part of a chord is a vital skill when becoming a musician. This song and activity is very rich in it's musical lessons. We play the autoharp which allows us to have our hands doing two different things, and our eyes are looking at the chord map and reading music. We are hearing the chord progressions and then we sing each piece of the chord as each student points to their triangles. It's so fun!

Drunken Sailor

This folk song teaches musical form: You hear a theme that repeats a few times and we do the same dance movement back and forth. Then at the end of the phrase "...early in the morning" you hear a strong cadence pull to DO. A cadence is found at the end of a musical phrase. This cadence has a strong pull to our ears that indicates the musical sentence has finished. This cadence trains the ear how music sounds when it is complete or finished.

Fox Hunt - NEW Puppet Show!

New puppet show! This fun song teaches us to identify rhythmic patterns and learn about classical form. Classical form is when you identify the reoccurring melodic themes and label them. Understanding this concept will help your student in 3rd year to compose their own music! 

Jungle Rhythms - spatial skills!

As your child sees how the Jungle Rhythm chart divides space and hear how the music divides time, they become aware of how the two correlate. This develops their spatial awareness. Seeing the Jungle Rhythm chart exposes children to what the written form of subdividing looks like.

Can't Bug Me!

Today in class we clapped bug rhythms without seeing the bug cards. That’s right! We clapped our rhythms today only using the ‘real’ music notation, without the help of our musical bugs. They’re smart little cookies! 

Our new puppet show was written by Gioachino Antonio Rossini, who was born on February 29 (leap year!), 1792 in Italy to a family of musicians. His father played the horn and his mother was a singer. He was just six years old when he joined his father’s band – he played the triangle. When he was only 10 years old, he was asked often to play the piano and sing at their church. At that age, he began composing and soon became the most celebrated composer of Italian Opera. Our puppet show, “The Fox Hunt” is from the William Tell Overture. This famous piece has been imitated and heard in various "rock-n-roll" forms (video below all over the world! 

I value open and honest communication so please feel free to contact me if you have any questions, concerns, or comments.

Thank you!