Well, hello all. I didn't realize it had been a month since I'd last updated you! We spent the last month learning Irish songs in honor of St. Patrick's season, and in preparation for a big Irish concert the Lindsays did at the school on March 16. The kids learned "Molly Malone," "The Rattlin' Bog" and "Charlie on the MTA" and by all counts, they loved it. IT was a wonderful month and I think I'm still recovering! I returned from St. Patrick's weekend expecting them to be "all done" with Irish music, and instead, kids were asking to sing the songs again. And so we did! Lots of fun.
Also, in the month of March, Mrs, Fonseca and I attended a three-day conference of the Massachusetts Music Educators Assocation. Some 1,600 school music teachers from across the state convened in Boston for three days of workshops, concerts, master classes, and more. We came back totally inspired. Since that conference, we've been trying out a lot of the techniques and ideas we learned there. These include more singing of Do, Mi, Sol (the notes of the most common chords we hear in all music, every day). I'm focusing now on getting the kids to learn to sing in tune and on key, and also be able to hear and play patterns they hear. We're doing this exercise, called "Call and Response" both with rhythms and with singing patterns. Also, you may have heard, we're working on ukuleles, adding skills one string at a time. Learning music takes repeated practice and so we are sure to include ukulele instruction into every class session where it appears that the kids can handle it. Sometimes the classes are a little too active for the focused work it would require to learn uke, but that's always determined on the day ... every day is very different! In the meantime, we try to keep our focusing on learning and having fun.
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Hi!Mrs. Lindsay teaches music to all of the kindergarten and 4 out of 5 first grade classes at NMES. Archives |