Today in MusIQ Club!

Lesson 11:

Today we met with our new teacher. His name was Mr. Scott Joplin, and he was alive about 100 years ago. Isn’t it great that even though his parents had no money, his mother was able to get jobs cleaning houses for the rich so her son could play on their pianos to practice? Someone even agreed to give him lessons for free!

Mr. Joplin taught us how to make a 5-finger ant tunnel with our right hand. He also taught us that each of our fingers has a number, with our thumb being finger #1 and each other finger is a number counting up from 1. Make sure you always have your thumb on Middle C and that each finger is playing a neighbour note!

After this lesson, we spent some time practising with Miss Melody, and then we went to the Games Room where we had a few new games! See you in 2 weeks!

Home Assignments For The Week & Reminders:

1- Print out and complete this worksheet!

1- Practice forming your 5-finger ant tunnel, and playing with all of your fingers ever day!

2- Print out some songs from this page so that you can practice playing with your 5-finger ant tunnels and remember your finger numbers!

Lesson 22:

Today, we learnt about a few more grownup notes. These new notes are called the half note, and the quarter note. The half note is worth 2 beats, and the quarter note is worth 1 beat. Mr. Villa Lobos did a great job at explaining these too us, and Miss Melody helped us practice them to make sure we remember them!

After all this hard work, we went to the Games Room, and noticed that the Train Game is now using grown up notes, including the half note and quarter note that we just learnt about! Amazing job everyone!

To finish off the class, you all went to the improvisation room and practised playing your quarter notes and your half notes using different sounds and background music! Great work everyone!

Home Assignments & Reminders:

1- Print out and work on this activity sheet!

2- Try writing out different quarter notes, and half notes at home. Then play them on the piano or clap the rhythm to yourself! Don’t forget to bring an example of your work in next week!

3- Remember to keep improvising every day and always have fun!

Lessons 33 & 34:

We did two lessons with Mr. Mozart today! They were both very similar, covering the first few notes on the Treble Clef. Mr. Mozart showed us the notes C, D and E and made us play a few different tunes that use these notes!

After a practice session with Miss Melody, we went to the Games Room and spent some time playing the different games. Finally, we went to the Improvisation Room and tried playing along to Mozart’s Eine Kleine Nachtmusik. You all came up with some great stuff to add to this “background music”. Great work everyone! See you all next class!

Home Assignments For The Week & Reminders:

1- As always, keep practising the songs that you printed out.(If you need the link again, just send me an email!) Some of you can play a few for the rest of the class next week if you want!

2- Try drawing out a Treble Clef, and write out different melodies using the notes we learnt in today’s class.

3- Don’t forget to improvise and have fun at the piano every day!

4- Print out your weekly activity sheet!

Lesson 47:

Today’s class was filled with different songs! Mr. Satie helped you both play through several new songs that were written out on the Grand Staff. Mr. Satie helped you with wrong notes, and made sure that you always held the notes for the correct length. Great work everyone!

After this song filled lesson, you all went to see Miss Melody in the Practice Room, before relaxing a bit in the Games Room.

To finish off the class, you went to the Improvisation Room to experiment with holding notes and different types of instruments. Isn’t it neat how the piano’s sound fades as you hold a note, but some instruments such as a violin, can keep the intensity of their sounds? Great job everyone! See you all next week!

Home Assignments For The Week & Reminders:

1- Print out and complete your weekly worksheet.

2- Print out a copy of Row, Row, Row, if you didn’t last week, and spend some time practising it.

3- Keep working on Old Grey Goose.

4- Try and hunt down different music recordings, and listen to the different instruments. How many different ones can hold their sound level!?

Lesson 58:

Today, Mr. Chopin taught us about a technique composers use when they want to have note that are played and held for longer than the duration of one bar. To do this, they use a tie, which is drawn as a line connecting two notes. When you see this in the music, you play the first note, hold for it’s full value and the value of the next note.

After this, we went to see Miss Melody in the practice room, who helped us play a few more pieces with tied notes in them. We also took the time to clap a few different rhythms together that I drew out on the white board.

To finish off the class, we went to the Games Room and then we went to the Improvisation Room as well. Fantastic work everyone! See you all next week!

Home Assignments For The Week & Reminders:

1- Print out a copy of Row, Row, Row to work on!

2- Practice Pop Goes The Weasel, pay close attention to the rests!

3- Write out some rhythms with ties in them! Clap them with a friend!

Lesson 82:

Today, Mr. Debussy helped us play more songs using our new G Position! While playing these songs, he also pointed out intervals of a second to us. An interval of a second. Notes that are a second apart are C-D, or D and E, or E and F sharp! Can you figure out how to calculate these intervals? (The answer is that two semi tones form a second!)

After a session with Miss Melody, we had some time to play all the games and to get creative in the Improvisation Room. Great work!

See you next week!

Things To Work On:

1- Print out and complete this review worksheet.

2- Print out and practice Pop Goes The Weasel!

3- Print out and complete this rhythm sheet!

Filed under: St. Margaret's Bay Elementary Tagged: | activity sheet, sheet music