​This year, we brought March Madness to the music room!   We used basketballs for a variety of different activities including keeping a steady beat, bouncing the balls to different rhythms, and playing a pass the ball circle game.

Classes played rhythms sticks to better understand the form of the song "Live Alive" performed by a popular Christian Folk band called Rend Collective.

The leprechauns caused some mischief in the music room and took away the bar lines in a piece of music!  Students looked at the time signature to put the bar lines back where they belong.

We played a game similar to "Hot and Cold."  One students hid a pot of gold and another student, the leprechaun,  had the task of finding it.  The class played tambourines quietly when the leprechaun was far away and played louder as the leprechaun got closer to help them find the gold!

We tossed bean bags along with a song about green eggs and ham.  As the music got faster and faster, we did our best to not drop our "eggs!"

We played drums and followed the rhythms and directions of the book Hand, Hand, Fingers, Thumb.

​​We placed bean bags on our heads to represent apples
​and saw how many we could balance "up on top."

WELCOME TO ITALY!

This week, we learned about the accordion and danced to some traditional Italian music.

We finished our Italy unit with a hilarious game called "Pasta of Composer" in which students have to guess if the Italian names displayed are the names of Italian Composers or delicious pasta!

We traveled to China just in time to celebrate the Chinese New Year!

​We played a variety of instruments, watched and created our own Dragon dances and composed songs based on the Zodiac signs.

​Students also created their own personal drums using plates, pencils, string and beads.

​While in Africa, we learned about a variety of unique instruments and played along with a number of traditional songs African songs.