Wednesday, March 27, 2019

March Newsletter

Wow, March was quite the month wasn't it? Between 2 choir field trips, multicultural night performances, and getting ready for Spring Break it's been hard to find time to take a breath! I hope that everyone is able to rest over break and come in April ready to learn a ton!Here is what we did in the music room during March:
Kindergarten - we learned the importance of practicing, and finally performed our Pizza song in English and Spanish. We're now working on our hand-percussion unit within a farm theme. It's super cute and the kids love playing all of the instruments :)
1st grade - we learned how to play Bump Up Tomato (a Mi, Sol, La song) on the tone bells! When we get back from break we'll do some review and then work on making a song of our own with the tone bells.
2nd grade - we finished reviewing Mi, Sol, La, on Tone Bells. We will do a brief review after break and then work on adding our new singing notes (Do and Re) before making a composition using all 5 of our singing notes.
3rd grade - we performed the Tinikling dance at Multicultural Night and got to teach some of our families at the same time, super fun! Now we're making our music passports in preparation of singing songs from all around the world for the rest of the year :)
4th grade - we can play Hot Cross Buns!! After months of working on reading notation and translating it to performing on the recorder we can play our first song and I didn't have to play it for them once! I'm so proud of them. We'll continue learning more songs after break.
5th grade - we are able to independently play 1 part of our 3-part xylophone song. After break we'll add part 2, and eventually part 3.
6th grade - we learned how to play the Cajon and read accents in sixteenth note rhythms. We'll be using this skill during our end of year performance for our 6th grade song "High Hopes". After break we'll start learning the ukulele part to the song, get excited!

Lastly: in case you didn't know, Edmonds was named one of the nation's Best Communities for Music Education for the 11th year in a row! This is a huge achievement, and I hope you see evidence of this award in the music education your child receives at MTE. Thank you for your support as students continue to grow their musical skills!