Mrs. King's Music Class: January 2012

What is a Boomwhacker?

Thanks to the funding of a project on Donors Choose, we have added more Boomwhackers to our classroom collection. Boomwhackers are tuned percussion tubes that allow us to play melodies and chords by whacking them on our hands, thighs, the floor or even our heads! Students have played rhythms, scales, melodies and accompaniments with the Boomwhackers.

Play Boomwhackers online at Music K-8.com

Martin Luther King Jr.-A Tribute in Music Class

Next week we celebrate MLK Day. In music class this week our Song of the Week is "Free at Last". This song based on Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I have a Dream Speech" is by Teresa Jennings. You can hear it and download it here.

In addition to singing this song, some classes watched a very clever version of his speech. A student from Brooklyn, NY used video clips of the speech and ran them through auto-tune. Auto-tune is technology that alters voices to be more in-tune. It was originally designed for singers, but this student used it to create a song from a speech. Watch his final project below.

Swat the Staff

This week students in the upper grades have been practicing their ability to read music by playing a game called Swat the Staff. To play this game we create a staff on the wall or a board. Students choose one of Mrs. King awesome flyswatters and take their place in front of the staff. With their backs to the staff and flyswatters down students listen to hear what letter they need to swat. This fun game has been a great way to review the letter names of the staff and has really brought some music reading rock stars into the limelight!

Lines and Spaces on our new Lines and Spaces

Hurray! Our new carpet is here! Many thanks to those of you that have donated to our Donors Choose projects. We love it! It has spaces for 30 students and is cleverly formated in five rows...just like the musical staff. What fun we are going to have!

This week Kindergarteners are creating patterns that show up/down/same patterns. We are also learning how notes are placed on the staff. The staff is the five lines and four spaces that music is written on. Using bottle caps we experimented with creating our own patterns.

Sticky Songs

This week, many classes have discussed the idea of "sticky songs". You know what sticky song are! They are those songs that get stuck in your head. You hum them, sing them in the shower, and even find yourself replaying them in your head over and over. What's the stickiest song right now? Most classes agreed that "Red Solo Cup" was one that was hard to shake. Others mentioned songs like "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" and several commercial jingles.

This week our song of the week is kind of a sticky song. It's called "A New Year" by Teresa Jennings. Listen to it here. Kids-ask your parents for permission to download this song for your iPod or MP3 player.

Learn more about the Science of Music: Why Do Songs Get Stuck in Our Heads at this link.