Music
The kindergartners have been busy celebrating the season with chanting, singing and dancing their way through Halloween inspired material. I taught the students a rhyme called "Pumpkin Patch." We played around with the rhyme, exploring fast and slow, loud and soft, high and low, serious vs. silly voices and other musical opposites. We are exploring basic ensemble playing skills by first experimenting with small percussion instruments, such as bells, shakers, rhythm sticks and djembes. The students created an arrangement of the rhyme "Pumpkin Patch" by deciding when certain groups of instruments would play and on which phrases of the rhyme. They ended up creating a sort of (tricky!) musical hocket - a musical technique in which the rhyme is divided between two parts. For instance Group 1 one says "Pump.." while the Group 2 then says "kin.." and so on, dividing the syllables amongst two groups, with both groups challenged at not missing a beat and staying in time with the original rhyme.
In addition to small percussion exploration, 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