Another Black Belt!

Congratulations to 5th grader Kharine Rivera on earning her Band Karate Black Belt!  This is Kharine's first year playing the clarinet and she has been working really hard to move past us and earn all of her belts!

Orange Belts!

4th Graders have earned their recorder Orange Belts!   To earn their belts, students needed to perform three songs all together as a class.  These songs were Apple Tree, King's Land, and Pease Porridge Hot.

Orange belt songs included the pitches G, E, A, and new note C (so, mi, la, and do).  C is very difficult because you need to cover every hole on the recorder.  We heard lots of squeaks, but also lots of successes!  Students also needed to add half note rhythms to their bank of rhythms to help them perform these songs.

Hear some examples of these songs below, performed by Mrs. Potter's class.



 

Next, students have the choice to earn orange beads by taking individual tests on the songs Chain Chain Daisy Chain and Mouse Mousie.  These songs include all the same concepts as orange belt songs.

Bucket Drumming

5th Graders are starting a bucket drumming unit.  This year, we will be using a program called Bucket Drumming Karate.  Students are using chopsticks as their drumsticks and earn colored masking tape belts for each test they take.  The tests start out easy, but they get much harder!  To be successful, we are reviewing rhythms we already know and learning some new ones too.

We learn our songs all together.  Students have to focus on rhythms and sticking (when to use their left or right sticks).  When we are comfortable with the rhythms as a class, we break into centers to take tests.

  

The students who are not taking tests are composing their own rhythms to create Bucket Drumming books.  They are careful to put only 4 beats in each measure and add new rhythms to make each composition more challenging.

Other students play a rhythm game called Busted! to practice the rhythms we are working on.

Good luck to 5th graders as we all work towards our black belts!

Here's a Nest for Robin

Preschoolers and Kindergarteners are working on a fingerplay called Here's a Nest for Robin.  Just in time for spring, we are exploring the places animals live and showing them with hand motions.  Read the words below:

Here's a nest for robin,
And here's a hive for bee.
Here's a hole for rabbit,
And here's a house for me!

In addition to the words to the poem, Mrs. Beaudry's preschool class came up with some sounds to go along with the words all on their own!  Students fit these sounds into the poem and fit them in perfectly, showing how tuneful, beautiful, and artful they are becoming.

Hear Mrs. Beaudry's class's creative interpretation of this fingerplay in the video below.

The Wise Man

1st Graders' newest fingerplay is called The Wise Man.  This is such a fun fingerplay because it not only helps us show the form of the music with our motions, but we also get practice keeping the steady beat as the man builds his house.  Read the lyrics below:

The wise man built his house upon the rock,
The wise man built his house upon the rock,
The wise man built his house upon the rock,
And the rain came tumbling down.

The rain came down and the floods came up,
The rain came down and the floods came up,
The rain came down and the floods came up,
And the house on the rock stood firm.

The foolish man built his house upon the sand,
The foolish man built his house upon the sand,
The foolish man built his house upon the sand,
And the rain came tumbling down.

The rain came down and the floods came up,
The rain came down and the floods came up,
The rain came down and the floods came up,
And the house on the sand fell flat.

We had to discuss why the house on the rock stood firm but the house in the sand fell flat.  What happens when you stand in the wet sand at the beach?  How does that feel?  Would a house be able to stand up in the muddy sand?

Listen to Mrs. Bayer's class perform this song in the video below.

March Band Music

Listen below to hear our talented band students perform Rio Con Brio.  They will be performing this piece, along with a few others, at Evening with the Arts on March 28th at 6:30pm.  Come to the Leicester High School Gym to hear them live.

Chorus Preview

Evening with the Arts is coming soon!  Our event will be held on Tuesday, March 28th from 5:30-8:30pm.  The Memorial School Chorus will be performing in the Leicester High School Fine Arts Center at 5:30pm.  Listen to a sample of their performance below.  You'll have to come to the performance to hear the rest!

Monster Improvisations

3rd Graders have been learning a new pitch - la.  After singing songs using so, mi, and la and writing with those pitches, students were ready to create their own so, mi, la songs through improvisation.

Before they could start singing, students needed something to sing about.  They created monsters by choosing random body parts from a bag.  The more mismatched the pieces, the funnier the monster!  Then, they made them their own by coloring them.

When they were done creating their monsters, they echoed several patterns of so, mi, and la as examples.  Students could arrange the pitches in any order, but the important part of improvisation is that it happens in the moment.  The were excited to see that they could create songs about their monsters without thinking too hard about which pitches they needed to sing.  Students sang to their partner and to Miss Dagenais.

Some brave volunteers sang for the class so we could share our work with you.  Hear them below.

The Horse Stood Around

1st Graders love songs with beat motions that get their whole bodies moving, and The Horse Stood Around definitely does that!  We have been having so much fun with it that we forget we are practicing keeping the steady beat!

Students follow the spoken directions in the song to help them keep the beat with "one foot," "the other foot," "switching feet," "both feet" (jumping), and "only one foot" (hopping).  Their favorites are both feet and only one foot.

Here are the lyrics:

Oh, the horse stood around with his foot on the ground,
Oh, the horse stood around with his foot on the ground,
Oh, the horse stood around with his foot on the ground,
Oh, the horse stood around with his foot on the ground.

Spoken: Same horse, the other foot.

You can tell students are keeping the steady beat correctly when all of their feet sound the same.

Hear Mrs. Larson's class perform this song below.  We did not include jumping and hopping in their recording.

Mother's Knives and Forks

1st Graders just finished a fingerplay called Mother's Knives and Forks.  A fingerplay is a song or rhyme performed with hand motions.  Fingerplays help students to understand the form of a song or rhyme and also help them to sing and speak with expression.

In addition to the musical benefits of performing fingerplays,  this song in particular helped with students' fine motor skills.  We had to practice the hand motions on their own before we could be successful performing them with the song.

See students performing these difficult hand motions and read the lyrics:

These are mother's knives and forks,


And this is father's table.


This is sister's looking glass,


And this is a baby's cradle.


Hear Mrs. Gallant's class sing the song in the following video.

Down by the Bay

Preschoolers and Kindergarteners are singing Down by the Bay, a new echo song.  Students are really starting to sing in their singing voices after all of the work we have done with echo songs.  This one is sure to get students laughing!

First, students echoed the teacher and had to picture what was happening in the song by themselves.  It is so important to help children develop listening skills by first asking them to imagine the words of the song for themselves.

After a few weeks of creating our own images in our heads, students were introduced to the song in book form.  We laughed all over again after seeing the pictures in this Raffi book!

Along with being introduced to the picture book, after a few weeks students were asked to echo song fragments as solos.  Students are becoming so brave with their solo singing.

Here are the lyrics to our song.  Try to sing it together.

Down by the bay, (Down by the bay,)

Where the watermelons grow, (Where the watermelons grow,)

Back to my home, (Back to my home,)

I dare not go, (I dare not go,)

For if I do, (For if I do,)

My mother would say... (My mother would say...)

"Did you ever see a bear combing his hair,

Down by the bay?"

"Did you ever seeing llamas wearing pajamas,

Down by the bay?"

"Did you ever see a bee with a sunburned knee,

Down by the bay?"

"Did you ever see a goose kissing a moose,

Down by the bay?"

You could also create your own rhyming verses with your children to make the song go on longer.

Hear Miss Daigle's class perform this echo song with Miss Dagenais in the video below.

Cobbler, Cobbler

Preschoolers and Kindergarteners are practicing keeping the steady beat with instruments.  Right now, we are keeping the beat with claves to imitate the sound of a hammer.  We discussed how a cobbler was a shoemaker who used small tacks to hold his shoes together.  He would need to use a hammer to make his shoes.

As students sang the song, one student kept the beat with the claves.  Our steady beat has really improved since the beginning of the year!

Our song goes like this:

Cobbler, cobbler, mend my shoe. 
Have it done by half past two.
Turaluralu.

Half past two is much too late,
Have it done by half past eight.
Turaluralu. 

Hear Miss Randell's Kindergarten class sing this song and play the claves in the video below.
 
  

Evening with the Arts

This year's Evening with the Arts will be held on Tuesday, March 28th from 5:30-8:30pm.  This event will be held at Leicester High School and will feature student artwork and performances by the Memorial School Chorus and Bands.

Click here for performance times and locations.  Please note that any student performers should meet in the High School Music Room 20 minutes prior to their performance time.

Band Black Belt!

Congratulations to Meghan Le, who is the first student this year to earn her Band Black Belt!

Fais Dodo

Preschoolers and Kindergarteners are learning about lullabies using the simple song Fais Dodo, a Cajun lullaby.  First, students listened to a recording of this song.  Though they could not understand the words, they told me it sounded like a song they would hear at night because it was slow and soft.  We learned the vocabulary word "lullaby."

Then, students were given small stuffed animals to rock as we listened to the song.  Students gently rocked their animals and listened to the song several times.  After hearing the song for a few weeks, students were able to sing the song as a class.  It is amazing how they were able to sing the words in a different language through careful listening.

Check out the lyrics to this song below.

Fais dodo, Colas mon p'tit frère,
Fais dodo, t'auras du lolo.

Fais dodo, and let us go dreaming,
Fais dodo, come dreaming with me.

This simple song not only introduces new vocabulary, but it also helps students sing in tune through the use of a very small tone set.

Listen to Miss Randell's kindergarten class perform this song independently in the video below.

Tongo

1st Graders are singing a new echo song called Tongo.  This song is a Polynesian canoe song used to help the people in a canoe paddle all together.  As we practice this echo song, students line up in imaginary canoes and paddle along with the beat of a hand drum.  Once students are comfortable singing this song as a group, they echo all by themselves.  I am so proud of our 1st graders because they are very consistently using a tuneful singing voice at this point in the year.

 

Tongo, (Tongo,)
Chimney bye bye oh, (Chimney bye by oh,)
Tongo, (Tongo,)
Oom ba de kim bye oh, (Oom ba de kim bye oh,)
Ooh alay, (Ooh alay,)
Mahle kaah lo way. (Mahle kaah lo way.)

Hear Mrs. Larson's class sing this song with Miss Dagenais along with the steady beat of the hand drum.

Great Big House

2nd Graders have been working on a silly song called Great Big House.  Check out the lyrics below:

Great big house in New Orleans,
Forty stories high.
Every room that I've been in
Filled with chicken pie.

First, we talked about the lyrics.  The song is obviously a work of fiction.  We did some math to figure out that we would need to add 38 floors on top of our Primary School to make it as tall as this house.  Imagine how long it would take to get up that many stairs!

Once we understood the lyrics, we added a repeating pattern, called an ostinato, to the song.  Students were able to read the notation and figure out the rhythm of our ostinato all by themselves.  We learned that when our pattern is only a rhythm it is called a rhythmic ostinato.

Here is the notation the students decoded.

Listen to Mrs. McCance's class perform Great Big House with a rhythmic ostinato.



Once we were comfortable with the rhythmic ostinato, we added some pitches to the rhythm to create a melodic ostinato.  Again, students were able to read the notation from the board and sight-sing this melody.

Listen to Mrs. Whittemore's class perform Great Big House with a melodic ostinato.

A Ram Sam Sam

Preschoolers and Kindergarteners have been singing A Ram Sam Sam.  This Moroccan children's song has hand motions to help us keep the beat and show the form of the song.  We have really enjoyed the silly-sounding words in this song.  They have no translation from the Moroccan language, but imitate some of the sounds of the language.  See the lyrics below:

A ram, sam, sam,
A ram, sam, sam,
Guli, guli, guli, guli, guli,
Ram, sam, sam.
Arafi, arafi,
Guli, guli, guli, guli, guli,
Ram, sam, sam.

Hear Mrs. Armington's class perform this song in the video below:

Pease Porridge Hot

3rd Graders are singing Pease Porridge Hot.  First, we learned the song in unison (all singing together).  Students discovered some silent beats in the song that had no words.  To hold their place, we make silly sounds that go along with the lyrics.  Then, we practiced humming the song instead and then thinking the song.  Thinking the song while still making the placeholder sounds helped us practice inner hearing.

Hear Mrs. Burks 3rd Grade class sing the song in unison below.



Once we were comfortable singing the song in unison, students sang the song as a round (one group starts and then another group starts later to create harmony).  This was difficult for us, but as the first round we have sung, students did a great job!

Listen below to hear Mrs. Lowkes's class perform this song as a round.

Yarn Shapes

1st Graders are exploring their singing voices using yarn.  Students drop their yarn on the floor and follow the contour of the line with their voices.  This sliding sound helps students use their healthy singing voice and prepares students for future work with high and low.

Ribbon Wands

Preschoolers and Kindergarteners are exploring their voices using ribbon wands.  We were lucky enough to get ribbon wands as part of a grant through Fuel Up to Play 360.  Thank you to Mrs. Woods for using the grant money she got to get such great music and movement tools!  You can read more about the grant she got at her website here.

Students copied shapes Miss Dagenais made with her ribbon and echoed the vocal slide sounds she made.  This developed a kinesthetic relationship between high and low, because students had their entire body involved.  Vocal slide sounds are a great way to make students use a healthy singing voice.  Our kindergarteners and preschoolers are working on making a connection between these vocal glissandos and their own singing voices.

 

Boomwhacker Performances

5th Graders have been learning how to read notes in the treble clef.  To finish up this unit, each student was given a piece of written music to decode.  Students labelled the notes in their song and then color-coded it so it could be played on the Boomwhackers.  Then, students need to find the students with the same song as them so they could play it.  There is a lot of teamwork involved in playing a song on the Boomwhackers because each student has one note, and every member of the group needs to play at the correct time.  It took students some time to figure out the title of their song, but all groups eventually figured it out.

Check out the final performances below, divided by classroom.