Wednesday, April 9, 2025 | Blue Bugs Lessons

Lesson #13

Thanks for coming this week parents! We love having you here. You are such a vital part of your child's music education.

Don't forget our end-of-year SHOWCASE is coming up! Invite your family, extended family, neighbors or friends. Let's celebrate your child's accomplishments! Kids will wear their LPM t-shirts!

Our 1st and 2nd Year Showcase will be Friday, April 25th @ 5:30pm at the church at 2750 North 800 East. Please put it on your calendar! Sound Beginnings kids will be singing 2 songs at the start of the showcase. If you'd like to see the 3rd Year and Bridge Recital, it will begin @ 6:15pm.

Remember, this is a SHOWCASE... WE ARE NOT A PERFORMING GROUP! We're not expecting perfection. This is to show your friends and family what we've been learning this year and to give your child a chance to play for an audience.

I will text you the songs your student will be playing at the showcase. These are all songs and activities we've done before, but some of them have been awhile since we've gone over them. Please help your child have an AWESOME experience by being prepared! Memorizing their parts will help them be more confident. (Not required, but highly encouraged!) Everyone should have one bell part, one autoharp part, and one part doing something else. If you need to make a change, please let me know ASAP! If you don't understand what your child is supposed to actually do, please just ask! If the kids don't have an actual "part" for a song, they will be doing the actions or patting their laps the beat. I do not want to use a backtrack, so everyone will need to sing all the songs!

Although I don't know what order I'll do these in, here are the songs we'll be showcasing: Bill Grogan's Goat, Primary Chords Song (both verses), Frog Went A-Hoppin', Old Paint, El Gallo, I've Been to Harlem, Dinosaur Song, and Do Re Mi.

We'll do a few things all together and everyone will sing all the songs! The 2nd Years will do some songs alone. Then we'll have a graduation ceremony and sing our goodbye song. Then we'll start the 3rd Year and Bridge Recital, which you are welcome to watch.

Sight Reading
This week one of our activities was to sight read the steps or skips from a given note. This is a great sign that the students are internalizing and processing several of the the concepts that we’ve been teaching. This is a crucial skill set needed to develop into a music sight reader!       
        
Baby Butterfly / BINGO
Using the Baby Butterfly and BINGO activities we are able to see that our bugs are hiding in EVERY song! Now we’re decoding enough that the kiddos can find these rhythms on their own. Recognizing bug rhythms in songs helps the students to develop the ability to sight read better and then in 3rd year compose their own song.

Find the Bugs in Baby Butterfly

Subdividing with Bugs Part 1

Let's practice sight reading!! Open up the Homework booklet and find the Lines & Spaces page at the back. Find some pennies, smarties, or anything that fits between the lines and play some games with your child. 

Do you know the song "Hokey Pokey"? How about the ending? "That's what it's all about!" Try playing it with your child! Can your child hear a musical pattern at the end? (SOL, SOL, SOL, LA, TI, DO!) Identifying this pattern over and over again trains the ear to be sensitive to other patterns as well. We're developing intelligent listeners! Not only is the "Hokey Pokey" training us to be intelligent listeners...it's a lot of fun too! Here is fun video for your kids. Grab them and follow along.

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 :)