Music at home-rhythm, rhyme, and squirrels?

This week we continued to explore rhythms, adding the two eighth note symbol, read as ti-ti. We learned that two eighth notes can share the same beat of the measure, while quarter notes and quarter rests do not, and practiced walking and running. You can use your notation cards to continue practicing this at home, adding the two eighth notes card. We continued to explore the three black keys on the piano with the song "hop, old squirrel" and used solfege to figure out the melody, and continued to work on lines and spaces on the staff. We also continued to explore the music and instruments of Latin America.


Here is a great musical matching game from Family Fun magazine to use to work on musical terminology and instruments while having fun!

Enjoy this video by Theresa Jennings and our friends at Plank Road Music that helps teach/reinforce the quarter note!

Music at home- Play the black keys!

The piano has a really, really nice feature. While most of us remember accidentals and black keys from piano lessons with fear and trembling, if you play JUST the black keys, you've found a pentatonic scale. And many, many common melodies are solely pentatonic. The example above is from the website http://www.pentatonika.net/-which is a website focused JUST on pentatonic melodies and contains a wealth of songs. Chances are high that one of your child's favorites is playable on the black keys-so sing, play, and try to figure it out! You'll be developing your child's musical ear, their attention and concentration skills, and developing a feeling of accomplishment at the same time.


Other activities from this week:
Practice locating lines and spaces on the staff, and counting from the bottom-first line, 2nd line, first space, and so on. This is a helpful skill in later music reading.

Practice making and reading 4 count rhythms using the quarter note (ta) and the quarter rest (shh) symbols. The song "I like to play the sticks" is designed for this task.

Have fun!