Tuesday, September 10, 2024 | Red Balloons Lessons

Lesson #3

Next week, just drop off your kiddo with their completed homework and we’ll be ready 45 minutes later! :) They really do just fine without the parents in class...I promise!
   
I’m so thrilled at how good the kids were this week. Thanks for participating and enjoying your time together with them. Keep in mind, when you come to class, the children do act slightly different. Just remember to be actively engaged in what I’m doing and don’t force their participation, just encourage. What a gift to spend quality time with your precious child, bonding and creating fun music memories! This is SO much fun!!

Barnyard Boogie
This peppy song is even more fun when you realize we are imitating and identifying complex rhythmic patterns! The brains of young children are designed to extract patterns from complex layers, making more connections with each exposure. Start with playfully clapping the animals separate from the audio track at a slower speed. Soon they will clap right along as the music plays!
   
Primary Chords Song
The three chords in our song make up about 90% of all the music we listen to. Developing an ear for them is so important! Learning to describe how they sound will help us do this! (For those of you with a musical background: red=I, blue=IV, yellow=V)

DO is Home
Our purpose here is to match pitch, and eventually, to accurately pull that middle C out of thin air with no cues! WOW! We are developing perfect pitch! Some are born with this ability, but it can be developed with enough correct exposure and if taught from a very young age. This process will take six months to three years, so we'll work on it every week during our three years together.

Staff Awareness
In Let's Play Music we experience things before we label them. Experiencing and playing with the music staff is a great way to understand how it functions. When we start to add things to the staff like notes, and key signatures, the students will have information stored in their brains that they can connect it to, so identifying lines/spaces on the staff is the beginning of our visual love of the staff.

Play an ostinato on the bells - harmony training
An ostinato is a repeated musical pattern that is played at the same time as a separate melody. We did this today as we played DO SOL on the bells while singing the song “Hear How the Bells”. Our ears are getting SO SMART!

Three Blind Mice
Audiation means hearing musical sounds in the head. Audiation is the foundational ability that precedes all harmony skills such as singing in harmony, aurally distinguishing two or more notes sounded at the same time, harmonizing a melody. The ability to audiate is the focus of most of the activities in the first year of Let’s Play Music. Unfortunately, we can’t be positive if the children are audiating, but the results of audiation will reveal themselves down the road.

Why do we use folk music in Let's Play Music? This question is an important one. Read HERE to find the answer! Also, Click HERE to read about one of our Let's Play Music graduates!  

Here is a link to all the skills videos as well as the link to be able to purchase a class video to make up for a missed class. (tap or scan)

Have a musical day!
-Ms. Bethany :)