Glow-in the Dark Fun

This week we danced to "Tocatta and Fugue" by Bach, and the "Overture" to Phantom of the Opera while dancing with flourescent "magic" scarves in front of a black light. We also played the "drums" with glow-in-the-dark sticks to "Monster Mash". You can't beat Glow-in-the -dark for world-class fun!

5 little pumpkins

I'm a Little Scare Crow

5 Little Leaves

Scarecrow

The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything

Archive back to 10/2009 to see the original videos with the story, then choose an instrument and play along!

Leaves are Falling

Stirring my brew...

Mr. Jack-o-lantern

Pumpkin, Pumpkin

Little Spider

The leaves on the trees....

YouTube Videos

Some of the original videos that I made with my kids are posted on youtube.

Here's one of my favorites:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vS0IohJGmE

you can search for my channel missmsmusic to see all of them.

enjoy!

Hurry! Hurry! Drive the Firetruck

The firetruck came to school this week. We learned this song in honor of our visitors.

Tiny Tim

There are two other versions of "Tiny Tim" in the archives that you can pull up and sing along.

Deep in the Heart of Texas

Mr. Guinnea Pig

We're talking about pets this week. One pet we discussed was guinnea pigs. My kids had guinnea pigs for a while -- they even spent some time at school in the pre-k class with the kids each year. We talked about how guinnea pigs chew, chew, chew all day long. In fact, our guinnea pigs ate their house - twice. That was the inspiration behind the Mr. Guinnea Pig song.

My dog has fleas?

I Love to Ride my Pony - Giddy-up Giddy-up Go!

We turned paper cups into "instruments" as we made the sounds of horses clip-clopping down the street by tapping them together.

The link to the song:

http://cowboykids.nationalcowboymuseum.org/song_pony.html

Hope it doesn't get stuck in your head like it did mine....
.... I love to ride my pony, giddy-up, giddy-up go! Grab a couple of cups and clip-clop along...

Shark Story

Daddy, Mommy, Baby -- AIIIGHHH!

Texas Tumbleweeds

We pretended to be Texas tumbleweeds and tumbled and tumbled to "Tumblin' Tumbleweeds" by Moe Brown.

Little Mousey Brown

Oldies but Goodies

If you search the archive, you'll find the following videos that correspond with songs we've been singing these past few weeks.

October 2009 - Wheels on the Bus
8/14/09 Shark Story - version #1
8/10/09 Shark Story - version #2
10/6/09 5 in the bed
10/13/09 5 Little Ducks

We'll have videos of this year's classes up next week!

Hickety Tickety Bumblebee

Sing along with Hickety Tickety!

Hello!

Hello! and welcome back to the music blog...

I look forward to some fabulous music fun this year!

We'll be posting our first music video of the year in just a couple of weeks. Be sure to check back often.

After all, YOU may be the next star!

Good-bye!

We've had a great year in music! This is our last post of the year, and I will miss your children terribly! For those who are moving on, good luck and godspeed. For those who will be back next year, I look forward to more video fun. Maybe I'll figure out how to upload the videos onto an actual website so you can view the videos in a larger format!

Keep checking the blog over the summer - chances are I'll make my boys do some more video creations this summer.

Composer-palooza!

We've spent the past few weeks learning about some classical music pieces and their composers. First, we heard "Pictures at and Exhibition" by Modest Mussorgsky. Mussorgsky wrote the music after visiting an art exhibit of a friend. We listened to an ox pulling a cart, two women arguing, and children playing in a field of flowers, among others. Then we drew our own pictures to more of Mussorgsky's music.



The following week we learned about Saint Saens and his composition "Carnival of the Animals". We colored pictures of each of the animals, and then pretended to be lions, horses, elephants, kangaroos, birds, and fish, and we even went hunting for cuckoo birds in the forest.


lions


elephants


wild horses


hunting for cuckoo birds

Last week we learned about George Frideric Handel, who composed a piece titled "Water Music" for the King's party. The King wanted to have the party on a floating barge, but there wasn't enough room on the boat for the guests and the musicians. So, 2 barges floated side-by-side down the river - one full of dancing party-goers, and the other with Handel and an orchestra playing Handel's "Water Music".

We took turns being the musicians in the boat, playing instruments along to the "Water Music", while others of us were the waves lapping at the boat.

Rig-a-Jig-Jig

Little Red Box

Oh, I wish I had a Little Red Box
to put my mama in,
I'd take her out and (kiss, kiss, kiss)
and put her back again!

repeat with daddy, grandpa, grandma, and etc.

sing me a story

Brush Your Teeth

Thanks to E's dad for sharing this song with us. He would video-tape himself singing songs to his daughter before leaving on business trips. We borrowed this one from his collection of silly songs that he shared with us.

God's Garden

springing up

jack-in-the-box

Goin' on a Bear Hunt

Farm Day

It was farm day at school! The kids got to go outside and meet several farm animals today. Inside we sang farm songs, and played a pattern-mapping activity using shapes. We started by listening to "The Happy Farmer", a classical piece by Robert Schumann. We talked about the kinds of jobs that make farmers happy. We chose 3: riding a horse, driving the tractor, and milking a cow. We assigned each of these activities to a shape.



Next we pattern-mapped the song by listening to the distinct music phrasings, listening for those that repeat. We then pretended that we "drove a tractor", "rode a horse" or "milked a cow" in time with the music as we placed the shapes in order of the pattern of the song.

Then we added instruments to the mix, and "played" the patterns we created with the colored shapes.

Goldilocks and the bears

This Little Piggie Went to Market

Wiggly Woo

Blogger black video issue

The black thumbnails that appear instead of individual videos are a blogger issue that has been going on for some time. Hopefully they'll get it fixed soon, but in the meantime, the videos work, they just don't look very appealing.;)

springing up

Rain is falling...

3 little kittens

Sunshine

Hunk of Mud

Glow Worms

Grab your own "glow worm" (light stick) and wiggle along to the tune of "Glow Worm" sung by the Mills Brothers.

Little Seeds

Spring has Sprung!

Dancing to Rimsky-Korsakov's "The Flight of the Bumblebee" and "The Waltz of the Flowers" by Tchaikovsky

Bon Jour, Dobre Dyen, and Guten Tag!

We sang a song that said "hello" in 9 different languages, played instruments from around the world to musical selections from 10 different countries around the world.

Be a Composer/ Conductor

This week we talked about 2 music "jobs". One is the composer, and the other the conductor.

The composer takes a piece of paper and an instrument and "writes" music by drawing 5 lines, and adding notes to the lines and spaces. We wrote our own music, and colored notes on a separate sheet which we then played on a xylophone to hear our creations.

















We also learned about a famous composer, Chopin (pronounced "sho-pan") who was a composer of piano music. We played our pretend pianos to Chopin's "Minute Waltz", and looked at real music to see what the lines and notes look like.











The conductor takes a piece of music and leads musicians in playing it. We each took turns being the conductor (the rest of us played the handbells). The musicians had to watch for the conductor to start and stop the music, and to know when to play fast or slow, loud or soft. We ended with a big round of applause for everyone!

Valentine Sizes

Sing along and adjust your voice to match the big, medium and teeny tiny valentines!

Drumming Circle

This week we did a drumming circle. We drummed to Tanka, Tanka, Skunk, by Steve Webb (Orchard Books, 2004), played follow the leader and drummed until our ears hurt!

Happy Instruments

Shadow Dancing

With all this talk of groundhogs and shadows, we decided to have a little fun dancing with ours. The music is "Orpheus of the Underworld", by Offenbach.

Mr. Groundhog

We've been talking about Groundhog Day in music this week. We learned that a famous legend tells that the groundhog can predict the weather by whether or not he sees his shadow. We learned this fun song and then pretended to be a groundhog poking his head out of his burrow after a long Winter of hibernating. See if you can predict if we'll have 6 more weeks of winter, or if spring will come early....

To Infinity and Beyond!

We celebrated "space week" by going on a space walk, and searching for aliens with our "light sabers" to the theme from "Star Wars".

You can make your own light saber by covering the end of a flashlight with a tube of colored tissue paper. I wrapped ours in a sheet of plastic (from a page protector) to give it a little stability too. (It's pretty tough to fight aliens with a floppy light saber).

Getting around the "black videos"

If you can't view this week's videos, try going to an older post - a video from December or before and then come back to this page - it has worked for me?

In the meantime, I'll try to re-post and see if that helps.

Good luck!

BLACK VIDEOS

Blogger is experiencing some problems and as a result, all the videos are black. Hopefully they'll have this fixed asap. Be sure to check back for the latest videos!

Dum, Ditty - drumming #2

Our text for today's drumming exercize is "Hand, Hand, Fingers, Thumb" by Al Perkins. We read and drummed along to its rhythmic pages...

5 little snowflakes

A Chubby Little Snowman

Freeze and Melt!

This is a favorite winter activity. First we got ready for "winter" play by putting on our coats, hats, gloves, boots, etc.

Then we skated, made snow angels, rolled in the snow and pretended to throw snowballs at one another.

Freeze and melt along with us as we play "Freeze and Melt!"

We are all like snowflakes!

This week we talked about how God makes each snowflake different from every other snowflake, just as he makes each one of us different from one another.

We looked at pictures of real snowflakes (Snowflakes by Kenneth George Libbrecht).

We cut out snowflakes and danced to "We Are All Like a Snowflake" by Greg and Steve.

Snowflakes Falling

"Stand Up" Welcome Song

One of our favorite ways to start our day is by singing "Hello" songs. This is one of our favorites. Usually we sing each child's name in place of the words "preschool friend".

We say "hello" in many different languages: source: www.wikihow.com/Say-Hello-in-Different-Languages. Certainly I am slaughtering the pronunciation, so bear with us. Feel free to let us know if you have other languages you'd like to share!

Once there was a snowman...

For more snowman singing fun try "Once There Were Some Snowmen", or "In the Sun They Melted" by InsideOut A capella. They sing versions of this preschool favorite in a variety of musical genres. The kids LOVE dancing along, and you'll enjoy all the musical memories from U2 to the Beach Boys and Kermit the Frog.

It's Drumming Month!

We'll be doing all sorts of drumming activities in music this month.

This week we read Max Found Two Sticks, by Brian Pinkney (Aladdin, 1997). In the story, Max explores different kinds of instruments for tapping.

We talked about all the different things Max drummed on, and what they sounded like.

As you read the book, be sure to watch for how Max responds to each person's question, and the only word Max actually utters.



Then we pulled out our "claves" (music sticks) and tapped along to Hap Palmer's "Tap Your Sticks" from his album Rhythms on Parade (you can download this on itunes, or off amazon). ("Woodpecker" is another fun Hap Palmer drumming song).


Then, we spread out several different kinds of things like boxes, milk jugs, pans, tinfoil, etc. around the room and took turns tapping along to music on each "instrument", just like Max.

You can pick up your own sticks (like Max), or use pencils, spoons, chopsticks, dowels, etc. and tap around the house. See how many different kinds of sounds you can find!


Watch for more drumming activities each week this month!