Music

The 2nd graders have been busy preparing for their Halloween performance on Friday evening.  I taught the students a rhyme called "Pumpkin Patch."  We played around with the rhyme, exploring fast and slow, loud and soft, serious vs. silly voices and more musical opposites.  I suggested to the class that perhaps they would be interested in creating a melody to the rhyme. After deciding on a tonality, we played around with a variety of pitches on the Orff instruments and as a class, they finally decided on a melody that they liked.  We wrote the melody down and then children each chose an Orff instrument and they set off to the task of learning the melody on their Orff instruments.  I was shocked at how quickly this ensemble was able to pick up the melody and transfer it to Orff instruments!  I was shocked even further at how there was hardly any rushing or speeding in the piece.  Most students were able to keep a very solid tempo.  I was one happy music teacher when I learned what an adept ensemble I was working with!

In addition to ensemble playing, the 2nd graders have been singing, dancing and chanting a lot of Halloween inspired material.  We have learned the rhyme "5 Little Pumpkins," as well as "Criss-Cross Applesauce, Spiders Crawling Up Your Back" (a fun finger-play where they do motions on each other's back).  There has been a lot of fun had (such as creative movement with flowing scarves) while listening to some Halloween inspired classical music, such as "Aquarium" by Camille Saint-Saens, "Tocatta and Fugue in d minor" by J.S. Bach, "Peer Gynt Suite" by Edvard Grieg, "Danse Macabre" by Camille Saint-Saens, "Carmina Burana" by Carl Orff and more.  Before moving around the room, the children listen attentively and then share images or moods with each other that may arise during the listening process.  They all learn how music is so subjective and different for every person, and can be such a deeply personal and moving experience.    

"Elemental music is never just music. It's bound up with movement, dance and speech, and so it is a form of music in which one must participate, in which one is involved not as a listener but as a co-performer".  --Carl Orff