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The Lady and the Crocodile

Handel: Water Music

George Frideric Handel was a composer for King George (I forget the number - 13 or something?).  King George wanted to have a party on a boat on the river, so he commissioned a piece of music from Handel to play at the party.  Handel's orchestra played while riding on one barge, while floating down the river next to another barge with the party-goers.

Today we made a barge in the river and took turns playing music, being waves and fish while listening to Handel's "Water Music"

Saint Saens: Carnival of the Animals

Have you ever heard a song that sounds just like a lion roaring, or an elephant lumbering, or a horse galloping?  Well, we have.  Last week we learned about Saint Saens who wrote a collection of songs about different animals (you may have seen the paper come home).  We listened and colored each animal as we heard their songs.  The next day we acted out the animals - lions, elephants, birds, fish, turtles and more!

More on Composers... Mussorgsky

This past month we have been talking about different composers.  (And we'll continue to do more throughout the next few weeks).  We talked about Modest Mussorgsky and his composition - "Pictures at an Exhibition".  It is a collection of songs written about works of art Mussorgsky saw at an art exhibition.  We listened to, and then acted out music about an ox pulling a heavy cart, children dancing in a field, 2 bickering women, and a hut on chicken legs.  We drew our own pictures to more of Mussorgsky's music.

The next day we drew pictures and then composed our own music to the pictures we drew.  Some of us tapped sticks, while others of us sang our compositions:

Marching Feet

Back in February I attended the Texas Music Educators Convention in San Antonio.  It was great fun -- well, maybe if you're a music geek.

This is an activity from one of the presenters at the conference -- it was a lot of fun and I found myself marching out the door with a resolve to get myself a bongo drum. The kids loved it and were asolutely exhausted by the time we were done.

Bumble Bees

Last week we talked about how bumblebees help the flowers to grow by sharing their pollen.
We played a gathering and sharing pollen game while we listened to "The Flight of the Bumblebee"
I think they would have played all day if they could have!

Then we learned a new Bumblebee fingerplay:

Here is the Beehive

But where are all the bees?

Hidden inside where nobody sees

Here they come creeping out of their hive...

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Buzzzzzzzzz!