The chaos of pandemic-year teaching sure compelled me to streamline my assessments! When working with early childhood classes, a lot of the learning is focused around contrasts in four main concepts: duration (long and short), tempo (fast and slow), dynamics
“High” doesn’t mean loud: Clearing up the confusion
Pitch and rhythm are a great pair in early childhood music. Students often use the words “high” and “low” to talk about “loud” and “quiet”, which we want to sort out as early as possible. Teaching in an international school,
Vocal Exploration Through the Town
I always take time for vocal exploration in my early years classes. It’s so important to get them comfortable with their voices, and work on their flexibility. We focus just on echoes for a while, and then we think about
The Game My Kids Want All Year
Even in this crazy world, I think we can all agree that one of the most important things in early childhood is developing a sense of steady beat. Music teachers have hundreds of ways to support this, but I’ve often
5 Great Circle Games from Around the World
As I wrote last week, I love to play singing games with my classes. Not only are they fun and catchy, but they offer a lot of teachable content. It’s up to you what you want to pull out, but
5 Great Circle Games for Your Music Class
Singing, games, and holding hands! I love playing circle games with my kids. And my kids love playing them. They love the catchy melodies, the movement, and the challenge: For some games, that’s the challenge of doing the right thing
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.
Composing with Legos
Legos are great for so many reasons. But this year I discovered one more. The most basic LEGO Duplo bricks come in lengths of 2 and 4, which is perfect for all the work we do with 4/4. This wasn’t new