Thursday, September 12, 2024 by Bethany Harris | Green Turtle Shells Lessons

Lesson #3 Your keyboard will now look like this! We can play a red chord now! Help your little piano players remember which fingers to use by using a red marker or nail polish to put a red dot on their right fingernails on the THUMB (finger #1), MIDDLE FINGER (finger #3), and PINKY (finger #5). These are the finger numbers that are used to play the RED chord. Put the RED stickers on your piano at home and match the dots on their fingers with the stickers. They’ll be ready to play Old Paint next week in class! Be sure they are using the correct fingers EVERY TIME they play the red chord!  Skill of the week: red chord with fingers 1-3-5, ROUNDED like a bubble, fingers flat are trouble! Build a good habit from the beginning and it will be so much easier! Can your child play a red chord on ALL the C's of the keyboard?   Celebrate Connection   Here are some ideas to bring playfulness to practice time! Sing Old Paint with a western accent. Kit Kat Keyboard: With the stopwatch on Mom or Dad's phone, time yourself (and Mom or Dad) to see how fast you can play ALL the C's! Now all the F's! Primary Chords: When you play the red chord this week, sing, "Red" each time your play it.   Kit Kat Keyboard Now that we know the black keys ‘sol’ well we are ready to master the white keys! Notice that the grouping of the black keys influences the grouping of the white keys. It is important for them to look closely and frequently at the keyboard in the beginning to reinforce keyboard geography. When they are hunting for those C's and F's refrain from giving too many verbal cues- or talking too much. Just keep chanting the key phrases "find a group of 2 down one is C" and "a group of 3 leads to F Yippee!" and saying, "look again" "does that look right?" C Position Chant We learned ‘C POSITION’ this week which means our right “Thumb’s on Middle C and a finger for each key!" When we are in ‘C Position’ each finger is assigned to play the note it is sitting on. We will sing this chant A LOT in class! This week we practiced floating our bubble hands over the keys and then letting them land on ‘C Position’. Continue this at home! Don’t feel frustrated if it’s tricky for your child at this point to press down ONLY the 1,3,5 fingers… we’ll keep strengthening those fingers and soon it will be easier. Learn more here on how muscle memory works when learning to play the piano and why is it soooo important to emphasize that correct fingers are used when learning chords from the very beginning! Practice makes PERMANENT, not perfect! Perfect practice makes perfect! Finger Numbers Matching Game I've added a fun matching game to the download area on my website! Go to  www.musikandme.com and click "student login". Once you are in the Student Portal you can go to Online Resources > Let's Play Music > 2nd Year, and download the "Finger Numbers Matching Game". It's very simple: print both pages, glue thicker paper to the back (if desired), cut out all 20 cards, and play "Memory" with them. Laminate them if you want, or simply print on business card paper and tear apart. This game is most effective if you have your child say out loud what each card is AND wiggle the proper finger, as EACH CARD is turned over, even when it is not their turn. If they seem overwhelmed, just remove all the left hand cards and start with just the right hand. Feel free to sing the appropriate parts of the 3rd verse of the Bubble Hand song as you play the game: "Where is one? That's your thumb!" My daughter LOVED this game when I made it for her a few years ago and it really helped her learn the finger numbers in a fun way! Another suggestion for a super quick game is to simply mix all the cards face up in a pile and have your child pair them all together! Then go through each pair saying what it is and wiggling the correct finger. The key is to JUST HAVE FUN!!! Please let me know if you have any questions about this or anything else! I'm here to help! Have a musical day! -Ms. Bethany :)

Wednesday, September 11, 2024 by Bethany Harris | Brown Teddy Bears Lessons

Lesson #3

All "Home Fun Activities" are optional, but if you choose to do them, remember to keep the puppets and other props in your tote bag so that your child can use them class. We won't use them every week, but when we do, your child will be thrilled to participate with their own creations!    

Next week we'll sing these songs in class:

• Weather Bear
• Fall Is Here
• In My Class I Have Some Bells
• Little Boy Blue
• The Teddy Bears' Picnic
• Going to the Zoo
• Grizzly Bear
• Weather Dance
• Lavender's Blue

Learning to keep a steady beat is foundational to learning to perform rhythms. In class we use both our bodies and simple instruments to keep the beat and we imitate simple rhythm patterns with our voices. As the heartbeat is the child’s most familiar natural rhythm, we reference it in class to introduce the concept of a steady beat. 

The beat mat is a wonderful tool for teaching steady beat and emergent literacy skills (such as tracking left-to-right, identifying the number of syllables in a word, and developing fluency by emphasizing a steady flow). The red hearts represent strong beats, and the pink hearts represent the weaker beats.

Learning about the seasons helps children understand the passage of time and teaches them about change.

Optional home fun activity: Make the Zoo puppets on page 33 of your workbook - you will have the opportunity to use them during class next week!     
(Remember, these activities are optional but can be a great bonding experience to do with your child during the week.)  

Here is a video with our class story about the teddy bears having a picnic! Enjoy!

Sound Beginnings is education through musical play! It prepares children for success in Kindergarten and Let’s Play Music. Sound beginnings provides research-based elements that stimulate growth in the areas particularly crucial to the development of the young child. These elements make up the foundation of the Sound Beginnings curriculum.  Here is just one:
	In class we experience steady beat and imitate rhythmic patterns with our voices, bodies, and through hands-on use of instruments. We incorporate Eurythmics, which is movement-based rhythm training that is perfect for toddlers!

Have a musical day!   
-Ms. Bethany :)

Tuesday, September 10, 2024 by Bethany Harris | Bridge Lessons

Tuesday, September 10, 2024 by Bethany Harris | Purple Magic Lessons

Lesson #3

By the time the children are in 3rd year, they begin to pick up on different skills at different times. You can help your child the most by practicing the skills they are less sure on FIRST, then have them end with those things they are more confident in.

The parent note in the homework book will remind you to add the flat, sharp and natural signs to your flashcards. While you are at it, be sure to ask your child to show you a flat, sharp or natural with their bodies and voices! (Ask them to tell you the bicycle story too!)

For our theory homework this week, this activity will be much more beneficial by color coding (use any colors you wish), rather than drawing lines from the notes to the keys:   Celebrate Connection

• Stand on one foot while your parent plays a song, then switch!
• Play "air piano" style by playing on the piano cover or with the keyboard off.

Flat, Sharp and Natural Game
We won't just learn the names of these terms and how they work, we use our bodies and our voices to truly internalize and understand how each of these terms can affect any of our regular music alphabet white keys.
  
Our Bugs Are So Fun
Your student is now ready to recognize rhythm notation using 'real' note names and counting terms. This song will help keep that fun! Reading the lyrics while listening can help them learn the words faster! 

Get inspired from one of the very first Let's Play Music graduates! She graduated from her 3rd year of Let's Play Music back in 2001 , and look at her 12 years later!
 

Have a musical day!
-Ms. Bethany :)

Tuesday, September 10, 2024 by Bethany Harris | 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! 

Have a musical day!
-Ms. Bethany :)