Making Music!

So last week was music week in Pre-K and I am excited to share all the learning we did last week! Some weeks are fun and some weeks are just awesome, where the children generate wonderful questions, become really involved and show a lot of interest and when that happens, it's so much fun to watch! This was one of those weeks.

First, we began discussing what we already know about music. The peas knew a lot already and after discussing what they knew, they were able to add many questions about what they wanted to know.  Our first conversation was about guitars, so we began by labeling an acoustic guitar for Morning Message.



In Pre-K 1, we used the ipads to listen to acoustic guitar music & electric guitar music in a center, then the peas graphed which they liked better. This was my first clue that this group was very interested in our theme...they spent a great amount of time listening before they made a decision.

 Electric guitar won!

Here's the two videos we used if you are interested in listening:

 

Pre-K 2 started the week by making some instruments of their own!

 These shaker/maracas were great!

They also experimented with sound using beans and cups in centers.

We downloaded several music apps to use with the ipads, but this one was a favorite and highly recommended as a free music app. It was great for tapping out patterns in a group, exploring tempo and rhythm, and making the peas laugh at the silly monkey!

I love this picture of tapping in progress. :)

Next, we met a member of a rock band! Ms. Molly's son travels with a band and he and one of the guitarists came up and showed the peas electric guitars and explained how they work. They were really cool.

 

We explored some instruments in class.

 

 

On Wednesday we all brought instruments to school!

 And after printing out pictures of all of us, we graphed them along with other instruments. We graphed them by Electronic, Brass, Wind, String and Percussion. They were really good at graphing. I had to check a couple in the wind/brass categories, but they were always right!

 

 

We also had another awesome visitor! One of our pea's moms had a friend that brought his bass to show us!

He was wonderfully patient and answered all the peas questions. My favorite one was "How does that fit in your car?!" Good question! He tapped out a beat for us and we clapped along and told us how he learned to play guitar when he was a little boy. He even let every pea strum the bass.

 

 

Thanks for coming Carl!

Lastly, we made our own music using a lesson Ms. Mary from PPK showed me years ago and it remains one of my favorite lessons! We fill glasses with different levels of water and color each glass of water with a different color.

Next, we offer a small mallet to the peas and give them space to discover that the glasses all have different tones or pitches. After listening to each one, they use snap cubes to build a song!

 After putting the cubes together, they play their songs, moving cubes as they see fit to make the song work.

Look at this concentration! 

We rounded off the week by dancing-in Pre-K 2-and listening to some Beethoven in Pre-K 1.

 You can listen to the orchestra we listened to here.

Besides all this, we fit in a lot of literacy, math, and fine motor work as well as a trip from the fire department and preparing for our door contest! It was a wonderful, busy whirlwind of a week and I loved it. Happy Tuesday!