Happy Valentine's Day!

Happy Valentine's Day from the Music Room! 

Here is a recording of Mrs. Bass's 1st graders singing one of the Valentine's songs that we learned this week. Not only was this song fun to sing, and had a game to go along with it, but it also helped us to learn about minor tonality, minor tonic patterns, and practice keeping macro and microbeats (we had a lot of fun keeping the different beats together with the stretchy band!)

Wishing you and your family a Valentine's day filled with love and a fun mid-winter break!

NAAPID at Night News Article

Check out this AAPS News article featuring some of our Bryant 2nd graders and their performance at NAAPID at Night on Monday. There is nothing better than watching our Bryant students shine and that is exactly what they did :)

Click the link below to read the full article. 

http://news.a2schools.org/aaps-celebrates-naapid/

"A Tribute to Nelson Mandela"--2014 NAAPID Performance

Congratulations to the 2nd graders from Ms. Toon and Mr. Kinasz's classes for their wonderful performance last night at the NAAPID concert at Skyline High School! Following a tribute video dedicated to celebrating the life of Nelson Mandela, our 2nd graders sang two South African freedom songs called "Bambelela" and "Freedom is Coming." The 2nd graders did a wonderful job representing Bryant School last night and sounded fantastic! I couldn't be more proud of all of their hard work!

Thank you to Mr. Kinasz, Ms. Toon, Miss Regina, Ms. Johnson, Mrs. Kitzmann and Mrs. Ervin for all of their help and to all of the parents and friends who came last night to cheer our students on. Also, a VERY special thanks to Mr. Brines for accompanying us on the piano! We couldn't have done it without him!

If you were unable to attend, here is a recording of their performance last night, as well as the tribute video by Maya Angelou. 

Maya Angelou - His Day Is Done - For Nelson Mandela from poetictouch on Vimeo.

"It Fell in the City" 1st Grade Compositions

This week in 1st grade, we read through the poem "It Fell in the City" by Eve Merriam. While she never uses the word "snow" in the poem, we were able to figure out what the poem was about by using  our reading skills. We talked about how many songs we know come from poetry and discussed how we could turn this poem into a song. We decided to make up a pattern  for the phrase "all turned white" since it repeats in the poem many times. In groups of 3, the 1st graders decided what 3 notes they wanted to use for their phrase, and practiced playing and singing them with the poem. We had a lot of fun playing on the metallophones and working together with our classmates!

Winter Olympics Compositions

Today, we finished our Winter Olympics compositions and they sound great! To start, students chose 4 olympic events that they liked and figured out their rhythms. They wrote the rhythms on their paper and practiced chanting and clapping them. Next, each group was given a metallophone set to the pentatonic scale (CDEGA) and were able to choose one note per event. Here is what they came up with! Great job, 2nd graders!

The Star Spangled Banner

Continuing with our preparations for the upcoming Winter Olympics, second graders learned about our national anthem, the "Star Spangled Banner." Francis Scott Key wrote the anthem on September 14th, celebrating the United States victory over the British in the War of 1812. Aboard a ship several miles away from Fort McHenry, Key was inspired by the sight of the waving flag in the distance and wrote the words to the anthem. 

In Mrs. Martin's class, we listened to many different versions of the anthem, and talked about how the anthem is telling a story. We learned what all of the words in the anthem really mean, and then were able to create our own lyrics books to take home with us. We discussed how different musicians have created their own renditions of the anthem over time, playing with tempo, instrumentation, and style. The above video is one of the student's favorite versions, sung by Jennifer Hudson at Super Bowl XLIII.

We hope that we get to hear a lot more of "The Star Spangled Banner" in the next month, as (hopefully) many US Olympians stand on top of the podium and take home the gold!

If you want to learn more about our country's national anthem, you can visit this wonderful website where they are lots of fun, interactive games, and great information, including an interactive flag and quiz.

http://amhistory.si.edu/starspangledbanner/

The awesome graphics that I used for these slides were found at www.The CraftyClassroom.com. Thanks!