Buckets and Muffins and Thank Yous, Oh My!

To wrap up our year at Lannoye, we had an assembly last week.

Most of the spring 2015 bucket drummers

The original purpose of the assembly was to give our 4th and 5th grade bucket drummers a chance to perform the piece they've been working on, "Blue Muffin Tuesday" by Mark Shelton. Thanks to a generous bucket donation from Home Depot, we were able to do this in a simple and uniform fashion. (Thanks, Home Depot!) We were also able to share our performance video with the composer, who complimented us on having an army of buckets to bring his piece to life!

To achieve the different sounds, we played on the head of the bucket (the bottom of it), the rim of the bucket (the slightly raised edge of the bottom), the floor (or metal chairs, if you were in the back row), and the sticks themselves (clicking them together). Also, during the middle section where it goes into a half-time feel (the tempo doesn't change, but the emphasis does), you'll notice some group improvisation, trading twos between 4th graders and 5th graders.

Since we didn't want the assembly (which later added the PBIS Leadership student of the month awards) to be a two-minute hurrah, I found a cute song for Teacher Appreciation Month in Music K8. The entire school (K-5) learned it in secret to make it a surprise for the rest of the staff. During a couple of classes, all the kids took some time to write thank you notes to the people who have taught them things at Lannoye (including all staff positions, not just their classroom teachers). The kids had lots of kind, insightful, unprompted things to say! I assembled these notes into little party bags for the teachers and attached a cute "thanks for caring" poem. The bucket drummers hid them under their buckets until after the whole school surprised the adults with the song, then they dashed out and delivered the bags. Nearly 200 kids in the school, and they kept the secret for almost a month!! Surprise: Success.

This assembly was a great way to end our school year, and I can't wait to see what next year will bring!

As a way to show my appreciation for the work that the bucket drummers put into their performance, I spent a large portion of my Monday baking muffins...including blue muffins...for Tuesday. (Get it? "Blue Muffin Tuesday" was the name of their piece.) 11 dozen mini muffins later and a few hours of sleep later...the kids (and some teachers) demolished all of them!

Some of the kids asked for the recipes, so here they are:

For the blue blueberry muffins, I used THIS RECIPE and doubled it. I added a bunch of blue food coloring and used mini muffins (adjusting bake time to 15 minutes), and the doubled recipe made about 5 dozen of them.

For the (uncolored) banana muffins, I used THIS RECIPE (single batch). Since I made mini muffins out of them, I adjusted the bake time to 15 minutes. This resulted in about 6 dozen muffins.

I left an open invitation for the bucket players to eat lunch in my room or to just swing through for muffins before recess. I didn't get a picture with the whole gang, but here's the view from my desk partway through:

I'm very proud of what these kids have accomplished, and I'm glad that I could share my time and other interests with them the way that they've shared their time and growing talents with me.

Bolero: An example of ostinato

The 2nd graders have been talking about (and practicing their own) ostinatos (repeated musical patterns). Today, I showed them clips of the biggest ostinato example I know: Bolero by Maurice Ravel. Listen to the snare drum rhythm at the beginning. Then the flute comes in with a melody on top of it. The melody moves over to the clarinet, and the flute starts playing the same rhythm as the snare drum. This kind of trading around grows more intricate as the piece goes on, but the ostinato in the background never goes away. 

Check out this video and see if you can pick out the ever-present ostinato:

Music Notes: End of April 2015

Music Notes

End of April 2015

Hello, everyone!

The school year is winding down, and it feels like we’re only getting busier as the summer draws near! April is Jazz Appreciation Month, so we’ve been listening to, enjoying, and performing jazz music in addition to our other curricular learning targets.

Earlier this month, we were fortunate to be able to have the jazz combo from Pulaski High School travel to Lannoye and perform as part of our Special Loved Ones Day. For pictures and videos from that performance (along with other music room updates), please check out our blog at:

http://lannoyemusic.blogspot.com

Still looking for donations: If you’ve got any empty small tissue boxes (not the long rectangular ones), I’ll take them from now until the end of the year! I’m planning ahead for a 3^rd grade rhythm activity next winter…

Here’s what we’ve been working on in April:

This month, the kindergarteners, 1^st graders, and 2^nd graders all learned the song “Down Came a Lady,” which we sing while playing a game with two concentric circles. They also learned “Teddy Bear,” which is a jump rope song with actions. The students got to watch and dance to a variety of jazz videos throughout the month, and scatted along with the book Freddie the Frog and the Flying Jazz Kitten.

In addition to the aforementioned activities, the kindergarteners took turns singing the echo song “Down by the Bay.” They played some more “Bee, Bee, Bumblebee” and worked their way up to the beginning stages of Rhythm Band (an activity in which they play rhythm instruments with picture notation).

The 1^st graders practiced reading, writing, singing, and signing their first two solfege pitches, so and mi. They read the book Do Re Mi: If You Can Read Music, Thank Guido D’Arezzo, which helped introduce them to the music staff. At the end of the month, they added la to their solfege knowledge, using songs like “Doggy, Doggy” and “Lucy Locket.”

The 2^nd graders practiced reading, writing, singing, and signing their solfege pitches (do, mi, so, and la), and added re at the end of the month. At the beginning of the month, they also did a listening exercise with plastic eggs filled with different materials. You can read more about that activity on the blog!

The 3^rd graders started their month by watching the last two March Madness “Star-Spangled Banner” performances and comparing and contrasting them. They also watched some short jazz improvisation clips. Students practiced identifying time signatures visually and aurally, distinguishing between 2/4, 3/4, and 4/4 time signatures. They did a sorting activity with plastic eggs to practice identifying time signatures by sight. The 3^rd graders also practiced reading, writing, singing, and signing their solfege pitches (do, re, mi, so, la, and high do). They finished out the month by learning low so through the song “Scotland’s Burning,” and preparing for low la with “Down Came a Lady.”

The 4^th and 5^th graders learned more new notes on recorder. The 4^th graders now know G, A, B, C, and D, and the 5^th graders know low C, low D, low (and high) E, F#, G, A, B, high C, and high D. They’ve all been working on supplemental material, including the song “A Minor Melody” by Jim Tinter, and stretching their brains by improvising over different accompaniment tracks. We watched a couple videos of jazz performances in which the soloists traded improvised solos of varying lengths (as long as 32 measures and as short as 2 measures), and the students have been trading 2s, 4s, and 8s with partners ever since. Please make sure your students are practicing their recorders – ask for an in-home performance! J

Reminder to the parents of 5^th graders who will be in band next year: The beginning band parent meeting is Monday, May 11^th, at 6 pm in the PCMS auditorium, and instrument fitting days are May 14^th and 18^th.

Upcoming performances in the area:
Tuesday, May 5             6:30 pm      PCMS Band Concert

                                                          PCMS Gym

Tuesday, May 12           6:30 pm      PCMS Choir Concert

                                                          PCMS Gym (Preceded by the PCMS Art Show at 6 pm)

Sunday, May 17            1:00 pm      Spring PHS Band and Choir Awards Concert

                                                          PHS Ripley PAC

Thursday, May 21         7:00 pm      PCMS Jazz Night

                                                          PCMS Auditorium

Sunday, July 12             7:00 pm      Pulaski Area Community Band Concert

                                                          Shippy Park

July 16 – 19                   Varies         Pulaski Polka Days

                                                          Visit www.pulaskipolkadays.com for more info
Sunday, August 9          7:00 pm      Pulaski Area Community Band Concert

                                                          Shippy Park

Ms. Corinne Galligan

(920) 822-0433

cmgalligan@pulaskischools.org

lannoyemusic.blogspot.com    

Today's Google Doodle - happy 360th, Cristofori!

If you get a chance, check out today's Google Doodle! Today is the 360th anniversary of Bartolomeo Cristofori's birth. He invented the piano over 300 years ago. It was originally called the pianoforte because it could play soft (piano) and loud (forte). Cristofori's hammer system (in which hammers strike the strings) made that possible, since the strength of the strike can be altered depending on how hard the player presses the key. This is different than the harpsichord, in which the strings are actually plucked with no volume control. Today's Doodle is pretty neat - the animation shows the basic piano hammer mechanism in action!