Music Centers Fun!

Each day when students enter the music room, there is a chorus of "Are we having centers, today?" Kindergarten students at AEEC have centers daily in their classrooms, but centers are a special treat in the music room. We use centers to learn, create, explore and reinforce skills we are practicing both in the music room and in our regular classrooms. Here are some images from our recent center times together!

Make your name center. Students practice making their name with popsicle sticks and pipe cleaners. 

Magnet center. These gentlemen were so proud that of their alphabet work!

Feeding Mac the Music Monster is a music room favorite! He likes to eat music notes of all kinds, letters, numbers, words, names, rhythm patterns, and shapes! Students create "food" for Mac and then feed it to him! 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rhythm Towers

We are always working on reading rhythms in the music room. One way we are practicing that skill is by reading rhythm maps and creating rhyhtm towers. In December, we made our rhythm cup towers in the shape of Christmas trees. Our students had a blast reading the map and finding the cup with the correct note to add to the tower next. After following the maps a few times, they enjoyed making their own maps to follow. These friends are excellent rhythm readers. We currently can read and write rhythms containing quarter notes, pairs of eighth notes, quarter rests, and half notes.

Working together to read the map.

Showing off their finished product!

Holiday Program

Last Friday, our school celebrated our annual Holiday Program. We had a wonderful time together singing songs and performing routines in celebration of this marvelous holiday season. Our kindergarten friends have been working since October to memorize the words and routines for their program, and their hard work showed on Friday as they dazzled their audience with their performances all day long! We sang about Christmas, Hanukkah and Kwanzaa in our multicultural holiday program. We have had such a lovely time learning about each holiday and the different tradidions and special parts that come with each celebration. We have learned that we all may not celebrate on the same days or in exactly the same ways, but that we all celebrate with joy!

Our opener, "O Come Little Children"

Scarves routine for "Celebrate with Joy"

Sticks routine for "La Navidad"

Thank you!

One of our favorite kinds of songs in the music room are the songs we learn to sing for someone special or for a special event. My friends from Ms. Macintire's class learned this "Thank You" song to thank our wonderful custodians for all that they do to keep our school running so smoothly, as well as so sparkling clean! Thank you Mr. Carl, Mr. Jimmy, and Mr. Joe!! We love you and appreciate you!

Welcome to Music at AEEC!

We have been having a blast in the music room these first few weeks of school! We have been singing, dancing, creating, and learning together! One of our most favorite activites in music is feeding Mac the Music Monster! He is our friendly music helper and our students love to help him keep his belly full of music notes and words, letters, and numbers! Here's a look at how to feed the music monster!

First, you should write down what you would like to feed Mac.

He likes numbers, letters, words, and music notes best!

 

Be sure to fill up your whole paper, and both sides; he is very hungry!

Then, just drop your paper in his mouth and he will munch it up!

Music Memory Books

Our music friends have been working diligently on creating their Kindergarten Music Memory Books. These books will help them remember their favorite things about their kindergarten music experience!
Here are a few photos of some wonderful excerpts as well a video of two orange pod friends reading their books!

Hip Hip Hooray! Yellow Pod is singing at PTA!

Please join us for Yellow Pod’s

PTA Performance on

Monday, May 7, 2012 at 6 pm!

Yellow Pod will be singing their favorite

songs in celebration of their Rainforest theme.

Please dress your student in a green shirt and

khaki or denim bottoms and come

to the YELLOW Pod at 5:50 on Monday night.

Students will rehearse in Yellow Pod while parents attend the

 PTA meeting across the hall in the Tiger’s Den.

 We will then join you for our performance!

Hunting for Half Notes

We have been learning to recognize, read, and write half notes in music. One of our half note learning activities was to hide half notes in our artwork. We talked about how we could incorporate half notes into our work by using the notes as the feet of an animal, the stem of a flower, or head lights on a car to name a few examples. Our students were quite creative with their work! Here are some great examples of hiding half note artwork. Can you find the half notes hidden in these pictures?

Cate used half notes both on her beautful butterfly and her flowers. Even the butterfly's antennae are half notes!  



Damian used half notes as the players on his football field.
Kaden drew a jar of lolliops with half notes hidden amongst the lollipops.




A closer look at Damian's half note football players.



Really Reading Rhythms!

My friends have been working hard this week to be rhythm readers! We matched the rhyhtm of the words in our Valentine songs and chants to the number of beats in quarter notes and pairs of eighth notes. Then we played these rhythms using drums and sticks. We had to use our smart reading eyes to read the words and ryhthms at the same time! Here is a sneak peak into rhythm reading with Mrs. Gilmore's class.

Green Pod PTA Performance

Green pod did a dazzling job at their PTA performance. Their performance included several songs about apples, pumpkins, and leaves in celebration of their theme for the year, The Great Outdoors. Here are a few photos from their very fabulous fall performance. Enjoy!



The fabulous fall decorations provided by our wondeful PTA helped us feel like we really were in a Pumpkin Patch during our Pumpkin Patch song!




Sweet friends singing 'you can rest your head on me' in the song "Under a Shady Tree".




"Would you like an apple on a stick?"




Some of S. Jones' friends and their smiling faces at the close of a terrific performance!



Center Time!

The last few days in music, my friends have been enjoying center time as a reward for their good behavior! This is a wondeful time for our students to practice their creative thinking skills as they listen, build, read, write, create and draw together in the music room. Here are a few snapshots from a few of our centers!

Ladies reading Five Little Monkeys and Dooby, Dooby Moo at the Reading Center.

A friend offering me a milkshake that he made using egg shakers and rhyhtm cups at the instrument building center.



Friends creating and composing at the keyboards, our most popular center!




A friend listening to the Bop It  Game for her next instructions at the listening center.



You're a Grand Ol' Flag

We have been working on several patriotic songs in music lately. One of our favorite things to do while we sing our America songs is to march to the steady beat and wave our flags! Here are some images from a couple of Tuesday classes. These friends in Mrs. S. Jones' class and Miss Mangum's class are marching proudly while celebrating their freedom and their country!

Oh I Love America!

This week, we are singing songs to celebrate America in the music room! Some of our favorites include, "My Country Tis of Thee", "This Land is Your Land", "The Star Spangled Banner", "You're a Grand Old Flag", and "Oh I Love America". Mrs. Sanders' class from the Orange Pod sang "Oh I Love America" so beautifully today, we decided to share our sweet voices with everyone here on the music room blog! Notice what a nice job they are doing spelling A-M-E-R-I-C-A!

We hope you enjoy!

One of our Favorites!

One of our most favorite things to practice with our rhyhtm sticks in music class is the "Days of the Week" song. This version of "Days of the Week" is brought to you by Ms. Whitt's class from Blue Pod. You will notice this tune sounds a bit like the Adams Family theme song!

This favorite activity helps us to practice playing on the steady beat, resting in the appropriate places, and of course helps us learn all seven days of the week!

Rhythm Doesn't Bug Us!

Hello! Welcome to AEEC's Music Blog! This is a place where you can come to read about and see pictures and videos of exciting work that is happening in our music room!

Our friends are already working hard to learn important music skills. This week, we are studying quarter notes and quarter rests. We have learned that when we play quarter notes, we hear one beat of sound and when we see quarter rests in the music, we know to stop and rest for one beat.

Here is a video of Mrs. Mims' class from the Yellow Pod. They are playing rhyhtm sticks and reading rhythtms off the SMART board at the same time! Quite impressive! Enjoy!

There's A Pizza Place in Our Music Room!

At the instrument creation center, some of our friends decided to create a fully functioning pizza restaurant! At this center, students are supposed to think outside of the box a bit and use the instruments to build something. These friends decided to create a pizza place. It was complete with cooks, dough tossers, oven operators and servers! It was quite an impressive creation and they had so much fun deciding which instruments to use for each part of their restaurant.

This is a nice view of the stove top created out of wood blocks. Lollipop drums were used as skillets, and hand drums used as bowls to hold eggs and beanbags which functioned as dough! The guys even thought to take all the little red handle balls off of the triangles to use as pepperonis!

Here is a side view of the guys at work in the kitchen.

Our very own, very talented dough tosser! So clever to use beanbags as pizza dough!

Once the pizzas came out of the oven, they guys in the kitchen would pass them out to the servers.

Our carpet squares were used as the tables, our rhythm cups as drinking glasses, and you can see the delicious pizzas fresh out of the oven ready to eat! :)

Green Pod PTA!

Mrs. E. Jones' class would like to invite you to the Green Pod's PTA performance!

Green Pod has been working very diligently on songs with a big back yard theme to match their pod's theme of the year! We hope you can come join us on Monday, May 2nd at 6 pm for the PTA meeting and our performance! Stay tuned for a sneak peak of some of our songs!

Row, Row ,Row Your Boat

Another tune we've experimented with on our xylophones is "Row, Row, Row Your Boat". Mrs. Kimbrell's friends did a great job locating the notes on their xylophones, listening for the rhyhtm pattern to play, and echo singing the melody. When playing our xylpohones, our brains have to work on all three of those jobs, which is sometimes a challenge! These brilliant friends did a wonderful job! Here is a little video of Mrs. Kimbrell's stars!

Xylophone Time!

We have been playing xylophones the last few days in music class. We have learned that the music alphabet only has seven letters and that it is these seven letters we see on the xylophone. We have enjoyed spelling words using only the seven letters of the music alphabet, composing, and of course playing of our most favorite simple songs.

This video is brought to you by Miss Donaldson's class from the blue pod. They put on their best listening ears to play the xylophones! They did a great job following directions and playing "Mary Had a Little Lamb"!

Instrument Creations

On special days in music, we have center time. Most every week, music friends arrive at the door to the music room and ask, "are we having centers today?". One of our newest centers is the instrument creation station where students can build as they would at block center in their classrooms, but with instruments. This center is very popular and students usually spend a large portion of their time here once they begin working. They do such a wonderful job planning, thinking and executing that they cannot clean it up and move on until their job is just perfect! Here are a couple of photos of some blue and orange pod friends working at Instrument Creation Station. The design ideas were both original and turned out quite elaborate!

These guys from Mrs. Mitchell's class built a machine that cleans instruments. The instruments are washed in the crate portion of the machine and then they travel down the conveyor belt made of sticks and blocks to dry. They even made a place for steam to escape. Notice the cup tower!

These guys are from Mrs. Shelton's class. They created what they like to call "egg island". As you can see they made two towers on their island with a wooden bridge seperating each tower. They worked so nicely together to plan and build this structure!