Weekly Activities

Esme's Song Tyreese's Song

Alan's Song   Byron's Song

We continued with the music webs that Wendy started.  What feelings and ideas do you want to express? What instruments and sounds will you use?  Byron: Happy music. The song is about my family.  I love being with them.  I want it to sound like a rock song! Guitar, piano and trumpet. Grace: Sad music.  I miss my mom. It's hard to keep my stuffies in my cubby for a long long time. Voice. Jayla: Happy music. I want to sing the ABC's.  It's happy. Drum, voice and cymbals.

As we are approaching the end of this unit (2 weeks left), we are preparing for our summative activity.  For our summative activity each child will use Garage Band to make their own music sequences to describe a thought or a feeling. They may use found objects or musical instruments. The following questions will help guide the children through the summative process: What do you want to express? How will you express it? What tool/instrument will you use? Why did you choose that tool? This week, we listened to four very different types of music: Bobby McFerrin who uses his voice in different ways, Under the Sea from Little Mermaid, Coastal Wolf Pack (First Nations music) and a classical piece by Strauss.  For each piece of music, the children identified the different instruments they heard, what the song expressed from their perspective and what feelings were generated from the sounds. This was in preparation for composing their own music sequences. We also experimented wi...

Causation: How sounds are experienced. Drumming to watch sound waves travel  and move pebbles on a bowl. This week we conducted a number of experiments to help the children understand that sound is made when something vibrates and causes sound waves to travel. We started by placing our hands on the side of our throats and made different sounds. The children were able to feel the different vibrations when they talked, hummed and whispered. The children began to understand that when they stopped making sound, the vibration on their throats stopped. Using a rule to create sound. Strumming an elastic. Using the telephone. After conducting experiments, the children had a better understanding that when vibrations stop so does the sound. We concluded by making telephones.  There was lots of giggling as the children talked to one another using their phones. The children were amazed that the sound (vibrations) could travel from one end of the cup to the other.

As we examined the sounds in our environment, the children asked to learn more about sound from musical instruments. I had a tray of instruments for the children to play and they took turns trying each instrument. The children tried playing the instruments in a variety of ways: tapping, rubbing, blowing. Oliver: I like playing the bongo.  It's loud. Sophie: I like to play the xylophone. I make sound when I hit it. Jayla: I like playing the cymbals. Alan: I like the harmonica. It sounds like a train. G race: You use air to make sound on the recorder.                          After taking turns, each child chose an instrument to play.  Grace said they sounded like a band when they played together. We also played a game on the smartboard. The children had to listen to a sound and match it to the correct instrument.  Here is the link:  http://boowakwala.uptoten.com/kids/boowakwala-adventures-orchestra-guess...

On Wednesday afternoon, Sophie asked to have the vacuum turned off because the sound scared her. Her comment prompted our discussion today as to how environmental sounds cause certain feelings to arise.  We revisited the sounds we heard on our walk and discussed if any feelings arose from hearing these sounds.  None did but the children recalled hearing thunder the previous week.  The children found the loudness of the sound of thunder scary. We ended group time by playing charades.  We took turns expressing different emotions and ideas through the use of sound.