Last week first second and third grade musicians finished their first compositions of the year!  They worked hard to share ideas, compose rhythms, practice, edit and finally perform their compositions.  This is a process we will follow all year to share our music with each other and the musicians created some very cool music!  After Halloween we plan to start our next Big Idea…Melody!

Our fifth grade musicians are working on their concert repertoire.  They are learning to work as a group and have really begun to understand how to use their voices.  Now we start focusing on the details of the music and finding spots to really shine!

Fourth grade musicians are working on reading musical notation through playing drums.  We will be well prepared once we start playing the recorders.

Kindergarten musicians met a new friend this past week, a silly man named Ebeneezer Sneezer!  He helped us learn how to sing using steps and repeats.  We even learned how to sing a song about Ebeneezer and play the melody on xylophones!

The month of November we will continue to build on the musical foundation we have created through the beginning of the year.  More exciting news to come!

Our Polar Bear musicians have been busy in the music room to begin the year! We started learning  fundamentals and now we are getting ready to show what we have learned.

Kindergarten has been learning what steady beat is and how we build rhythms, including turning our class into a drum set!

First, second and third grade musicians have been working on accurately reading and performing rhythmic notation.  We first learned using iconic notation, and moved to musical notation.  Next week musicians will begin composing and performing rhythm compositions to show their understanding.

Fourth grade musicians created four measure rhythms for our beginning of the year rhythm assessment.  We are now beginning to work with musical notation in preparation for learning how to play the recorder later this year.

Fifth grade musicians are beginning to learn to use their voice as an instrument as we work on two new songs we plan on singing in our upcoming concert.  We have made some great progress so far and will soon record the audio of our rehearsal as a way to hear what we sound like, reflect on what we have learned, and plan for what we need to work on moving forward.  Concert dates will be announced as soon as they are finalized.

Mr. Ochoa would like to thank all of the Polar Bear families who stopped by the music room during our Open House last month.

Welcome back to music!  We have many exciting things planned for the upcoming year.  Kindergarten and first grade are beginning to learn the basics of rhythm by using steady beat.  Second and third grade are digging in to musical analysis before we start working more with rhythmic patterns and notations.  Fourth grade is getting prepared to read notation by playing the recorder. Finally fifth grade is helping to design the music classroom, and beginning to choose our repertoire for a concert.  Our elementary musicians are on the way to having a great year!