Lesson #1

Hooray for Let's Play Music and our new Red Balloon students! Thanks all you awesome grownups for coming and supporting your students. I can tell we are going to have a great year, great students and great consistent parents that make it happen! Thank you for singing along and doing the hand actions during class - this helps the students stay focused and builds a musical bond between you and your child. When they see that you enjoy music, they do too! 

*Just a reminder for next class… 
1. Parents don’t come this next week, which means totes & bells don’t either. Just send your kids in with their books, and they will be ready 45 minutes later. Please don't forget to send them in with their homework booklet opened to the homework page you completed this week (which is Lesson 1). That'll save me lots of time at the end, when they're super excited to get back to you and show off their rockstar stamps!

2. Remember in 1st year the practice process is all about fun and ongoing practice through play. Forget about the typical rigid "we are now practicing" approach to teaching children music. Put out the bells and let your child play with them. Listen to the music everyday in a natural way. (Bedtime, while in the car, etc.) Once a week, sit down and do the theory homework. That's it! Piece of cake!

(Don't forget to scroll all the way to the bottom to find the puppet show that you can print off for yourself at home if you'd like.)

If you have had any problems with the Let's Play Music app, or Remind, please let me know. Those are our technology life-lines this year!

Melodic Patterns 

Many activities in the first semester will concentrate on repetitions of certain melodic patterns. The first is MI-RE-DO. We will sing it, do solfege hand signs, play it on the bells, see the notes on the staff, and feel it with our full body! The songs this week that have this pattern in it are: Let’s Play Music, Red Balloon, DO RE MI, Three Blind Mice, Frog in the Middle. 

Steady Beat

A steady beat is an essential part of becoming a complete musician. We learn to hear, feel, identify and then reproduce a steady beat with every song in Let’s Play Music, but it is specifically addressed this week in Tambourine Train and Echo Ed.

Minor 3rd Interval - helps to sing in tune

Hickety Pickety and Echo Ed are key pieces in learning to match pitch. For a child to play and create music they must be able to hear and then reproduce what was heard. Using the minor 3rd SOL MI and simple rhythmic variations we train the ear to identify what is being heard.

Click HERE to read why ear training is important and why it should be part of your child's music education. Also, we've added the Magic Lamp Coloring book below. Print these two pages out and let your child color the characters as you discuss their favorite part about the puppet show. Click the buttons below to download PDFs.