Music Parent Letter – March 2018
Dear Parents,
Happy Spring! Hope you all are enjoying the lovely Colorado weather. The River classroom has been busy preparing for our annual spring show. They have been working on the songs and lines with me and in the classroom, writing their poems with Ms Charlotte and Ms Stephanie, and have made their instruments for the show. If your child is participating you may want to ask how their lines are going and give some extra encouragement if it seems needed.
With spring comes day lights savings time and every one seems to struggle with this change. My antidote for this problems is to bring in the storybook and song, “Waking Up Is Hard to Do,” a remake by Neil Sedaka on his 1960’s hit “Breaking Up Is Hard To Do.” The children absolutely love this song and have used it to chase away the “sleepys” and as a movement activity. This is one of the years most requested songs and books. It has even added an extra spring in some of our teacher’s steps.
We rounded out our instrument families by working with the percussion family this month. Percussion instruments are so great for reinforcing rhythm patterns and steady beat skills. This has been one of my over arching goals for the year. Our featured instruments this month have been tambourine and tambourine sticks, rhythm sticks, triangles, maracas, cymbals and drums. I also have a special handmade tone block that has the most interesting sound. I have seen much improvement in our children’s listening skills and rhythmic accuracy.
Children of all ages really love puppets. I was fortunate enough to find some really cute finger puppets in Australia and have downloaded their animal sounds. Most of the sounds are more like growls but interesting all the same. We have continued to listen to these animal sounds as requested in the toddler classrooms. I also brought in my bear puppet so we could sing bear songs. We have sung, “Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear,” and “The Bear Went Over the Mountain.”
Finally, in our preschool and preK classrooms we have been using a book of poems called “Animal Exercises” as part of our movement activities. This are very clever poems describing movements of animals such as a turtle, dog, lizard, dolphin, bird, or donkey. They really help get the wiggles out while improving listening skills.
It is such a joy to me to work with these children. As always, I love to hear your feedback.
Ms Kathleen