Tuesday, September 24, 2024 | Red Balloons Lessons

Lesson #5

Thanks for coming this week! YOU are a vital part of your child’s music education. :) Please continue to listen to the music at home (or in your car!) so that the children are familiar with the songs. It makes class time so much more productive and fun if the children already know the music!

Just a reminder, if you are paying monthly, tuition ($70) is due this week. You can scan the QR code on the right with your banking app or use my phone number to pay via Zelle. You can still pay with Venmo, but it charges me transaction fees.
    
You’ll notice that the bulk of new concepts and skills are presented on Parent days. We want you to see how the activities are done so that you’ll know just what to do at home. If ever you have questions however, feel free to contact me.   
   
Student behavior - I feel so lucky to be teaching such amazing students! You have brilliant, eager students that are so receptive at this age. I love teaching them and can't wait to see them next week.

Need some fun practice ideas? Log in to your Student Portal and download "Practice Fun Cards"!

We had a lot of new stuff we learned this week! Below are a few highlighted activities and their purpose.

May There Always Be Me
We taught the kids to feel their heartbeat and introduced the concept of keeping a steady beat. This is important when you're teaching a child to internally feel the value of notes.   

A-Hunting We Will Go    
We identified the MI RE DO pattern and sang it independently. The solfege patterns are important in training the ear. All the patterns we will learn in Let's Play Music have a strong cadence pull to DO. When the ear hears these patterns over and over again they aurally can start predicting where the music is heading. Patterning plays a major role in the construction of music.

Chords in Pieces
We actually read music today! Well, our eyes followed a chord map, and we sang the broken chords. I'm feeling so smart....yeah! The chord map is there to guide the eyes to see the color as their ears hear the chord in the music and their finger points on the beat to each chord. This eye-ear connection will train the ear to associate the sound of each chord with its color.

 
Ding Dong, Ding Dong
Correctly imitate pitches is important in learning to sing in tune, which puts us on a path to becoming a complete musician.

The Staff (Great Big Red Balloon)
It was so fun to identify the 5 lines and 4 spaces on the staff today!! We are taking time to let the kids visually familiarize themselves with the single staff. We used our Red Balloon song to accomplish this! This activity helps the children begin to visualize the staff, which will help them gain a feel for staff relationships.

We LOVE having our parents come to class on parent day. It was so much fun singing our lullaby and rocking back and forth feeling the steady beat of the music. Music is healing and can help us feel emotions. Music is powerful and every child needs music in their life. And not just for the reasons and benefits we normally think of as music educators.
    
Read Carson's story and witness how the power of music aided in healing a traumatic event in his young life.

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 :)