We will learn the song "The North Wind" and talk about a cute little robin that will stay warm during the cold winter by sheltering in a barn. 

We'll also learn one of my favorite folk songs (one you may have sung around a campfire during summer camp): "I Love the Mountains".

We will use our solfege notes to sing "Hot Cross Buns" this month! 

Mi-Re-Do

Mi-Re-Do

Do-Do-Do-Do

Re-Re-Re-Re

Mi-Re-Do

We'll also sing using our Sol-Mi minor 3rd interval to a cute fingerplay that goes to this poem:

I put my hands together

This is how I start

I bring my fingers down like this

And now I have a heart

See if you kids can do the fingerplay while you say the words!

We'll continue to talk about how songs can have a fast beat (allegro) or a slow beat (largo). We'll listen for the difference in the allegro William Tell Overture and the largo Vivaldi's Winter II. 

We'll have a fun time listening to "It's Snowing Outside" by Stephanie Leavell while we play to the beat with our different rhythm instruments. The kids now have sand blocks, a tambourine, a castanet, rhythm sticks, a jingle stick, and shaker eggs to play with during class.

With Valentine's day happening in February, we will learn and sing a song called "Kind" by Stephanie Leavell. We'll talk about how the letters K-I-N-D spell Kind and how we can be kind to others. We'll also talk about love and how much we love our family and our friends and sing a song called "May There Always Be Me." I love this verse:

May there always be sunshine

May there always be blue skies

May there always be family 

May there always be me 

I also enjoy Jim Gill's version of this song and how he substitutes different things that we always want to have around. You can substitute special people in your child's life as you sing this song together.

We will look and enjoy the beautiful illustrations in the book Lines by Suzy Lee while listening to a piece from "Swan Lake". 

I will sing my own tune to Llama Llama I Love You. Most of the kids are already familiar with this literary llama and it has a fun connection to the Valentine's holiday.

Two other books we'll enjoy are Over in the Meadow and I will sing another tune to the beautiful book All the World by Liz Garton Scanlon that is all about the love and every day adventures we have with our families.

The instrument we're focusing on this month is the french horn. This instrument sounds soft and kind and is featured in many great pieces of classical music. I'll introduce the french horn with Mozart's Horn Concerto No.4 and introduce Mozart briefly and talk about how he lived near tall mountains. We'll march around playing our pretend french horns to Leopold Mozart's Sinfonia di caccia "Jagdsinfonie" (Leopold is famous Wolfgang Mozart's father!) and listen to Dvorak's New World Symphony played by a brass band, Mozart's Horn Concerto No. 2, and Wagner's Tannhauser Overture.