One of the most important concepts we teach is communication through music, or what we might call musical expression. Music, I emphasize to my students, is not just here to entertain you or fill the silence at the grocery store.
Setting up a Sound Exploration Station
Every music teacher knows how much students just want to experiment (make lots of noise) when they come into a room full of instruments. As people, this probably drives us crazy, but as teachers, we should rejoice in the enthusiasm
The Listening Walk, Part III: Following a Score
Now that the students had inquired into how they could make their observed environmental sounds into musical sounds (inspired by Paul Showers’ The Listening Walk; see my Part I and Part II posts), we took it a step further. We visualized the
The Listening Walk, Part II: Making Sounds into Music
Following our inquiry into environmental sounds (inspired by Paul Showers’ The Listening Walk), we explored how that might translate into music. Sitting together as a class, a few students shared some of the sounds they had drawn/written in their journals,
The Listening Walk, Part I: Exploring Sounds Around Us
My Kindergarten classes have been exploring sounds, and an unexpected discussion led us in an interesting direction: How do the sounds in our environment inspire us as musicians? Cue The Listening Walk by Paul Showers, illustrated by the fantastic Aliki.
The First Day of School, continued
Once the kids have moved around and talked a bit, they can get settled in pretty quickly. So next I like to make an old-fashioned circle on the carpet and do some large group bonding—again, with the idea of getting