Snow Day

Well, in light of last night's snowfall, we definitely incorporated some snow activities and songs. We started out singing songs and then did some review of last week's material and added in a few fun games.

Snow Songs

Since we all happen to be LDS, it was easy to use some songs from our Primary repertoire.

• Once there was a Snowman - we added in dynamics that went with the motions: forte for the tall snowman, piano for the melted puddle. They love dynamics!! 
• Snow is Falling All Around - we talked about the weather and did snow and wind. Yesterday, the wind was so strong it was blowing the kids around. 
• Falling Snow - a nice, quiet, pretty song to help settle down for the next instructions!

Leader Activities

• Following the Leader - a popular activity from last week that the kids were telling their parents about during the week. It got a little more wild than last week did, so I think I will pass on this next time. It's cute, but they just wanted to run, which doesn't work so well for keeping everyone in line. So, it didn't really do anything for our purpose of teaching how in music, there is a leader. Still, the kids were having fun and singing, so not all bad.
• Leading with a Stick - they are really catching on to this idea. We started with the standing and sitting again. It works well to help them feel confident with being in charge without any technique. Then, we moved to directing a note. I am impressed with their abilities. They gave a prep breath, down beat, and cutoff. It's really cute to see them make their little circle cutoffs! Next week, I will start this segment with having them use open hands to start singing and a closed fist to stop.

Dynamics

• Sound Waves - piano: scrunched down, forte: reaching high
• Forte and Piano Cards - I would hold up a green f for them to say 'forte' loudly and an orange p for them to say 'piano' quietly. I then taught them about crescendos and decrescendo. I held up both cards and would put the corresponding dynamic in front of my face and then gradually slide the cards over and crescendo or decrescendo. The kids thought this was hilarious! I passed out their cards and they did it perfectly. I love these kids!

Patterns and Rhythms

• We used colored cones to do our rhythm patterns this time. It was so easy that it didn't keep their interest long enough. I'll have to get a board to put the rhythmic notations with the words so they can see them and we can move them around. I know they would catch on to rhythmic notation very quickly, so I just need to organize the materials for it. 
• Body Rhythm - stomps, claps, lip flapping, and other body percussion. I would do some and they would copy. I added a new one each time.

Solfedge

• Using a funny song that Abe learned in his choir, I taught the kids solfedge. DO at your belly button, RE like a rooftop, MI is flat, FA with your thumbs down, SOL like a gate, LA like a monster, TI points up to DO, TI, LA, SOL, FA, MI, RE, DO. A huge hit, as always, with little kids! I am so glad that I learned this song!
• Copy Cat - a few solfedge patterns for them to get used to applying it.

We finished off the day with singing our snow songs again. It was a great Musical Playtime session even with the rambunctiousness! They learned everything quickly and we will be able to do even more next week.

Back in Business

Tomorrow is my first day back to having Musical Playtime class. I am so excited! I have 5 children ranging from 2-5 years old. I plan to focus on 3 fun aspects of music: following a leader, dynamics and rhythm. This will give a good springboard to the rest of our activities and lessons we will have in the future. Here's my basic lesson plan layout: following a leader, dynamics, and rhythm.

Following a Leader

As most of these kids are new to a group teaching method, we need an introduction to the idea of listening and following commands. We will do this by taking turns being in charge. Here are a few of my leader ideas:

• Following the Leader (who doesn't like this game?) - take turns being in the front of the line walking, skipping, hopping, etc. around the room. This also gets out the wiggles!
• Do as I'm Doing: song with kids picking motions and demonstrating in front of the group.
• Leading with a stick (again, what kid wouldn't want to hold the stick?!?) - I will demonstrate breathing with the prep beat and having them sing on the down beat. After success, the children will get to take turns being the stick waver. My kids already got this after a few tries, so I hope this will be a successful venture with our little group. I will aid anyone who needs it. If all goes super well, we might sing a song or two. If all of this fails, I will just have them move the stick up for everyone to stand and down for everyone to sit (not a bad idea to start out the activity either way). We'll see!

I think the order of these will work really well since gradually moves from large to small movements. And if we are successful, these little children will have learned many lesson of being the leader that many of my high school band colleagues still didn't understand! 

Dynamics

Dynamics are a pretty basic thing to understand. Kids can easily hear the difference between loud and soft/quiet. The sooner you introduce dynamics, the more easily they will apply them in other aspects of music training. Kids are also smarter than we sometimes think, so I'm going to at least mention and demonstrate the full range: pp - ff.

• Sound Waves: quiet at the bottom, loud and the top with arms reaching high up (you always have to throw in some gross motor movements for these little guys if you want them to last 45 minutes!).   
• Get the whole body involved: pp=rubbing hands together, p=finger clapping, mp=hand clapping, mf=hand clapping+stomping feet, f=hand clapping+jumping+voices, ff=hand clapping+jumping+loud voices. At least I know my kids like to have permission to be loud for a little while!
• Time to apply: I will hold up a volume/dynamic card and we will all demonstrate it with either percussive or vocal sounds. 
• Let the kids judge!  I will give each child an 'f' card and a 'p' card. Then, I will sing loud or quiet and let them hold up which dynamic I am singing. 

Rhythm

Oh rhythm, the backbone of music! I am curious to see how well these activities will work for my age range. I want them to be exposed to a few fundamentals of rhythm: steady beat, note values, and different rhythms over a steady beat. Here we go!

• Clap, tap the floor, stomp our feet, or any movement to a steady beat that I will set. I will try out a range of tempos so they get a feel for it. 
• Explain the basic note value diagram with whole, half, quarter, eighth, and sixteenth notes.
• Apply those using the word-syllable treatment, each word fitting in one beat. Dog = 1 quarter, monkey=2 eighths, elephant=2 sixteenths + 1 eighth, etc. We'll put them in different orders and add more sequences of words as we go. I think they'll have fun with this one! I expect my 2-year old will have the hardest time with this and might not say the words with us, but he will still be hearing it, and that is important too!

We'll see how it goes and I'll edit the post to add in the kids' responses to our activities. I hope it goes as well as all of this sounds, because this sounds like it's going to be a blast!! Musical Playtime, here I come!

Review

Well, it went great!  The kids loved all of the turn-taking activities. Even some that I hadn't planned on them leading, they wanted to try out on their own. I was impressed with their abilities to give a prep beat and a down beat. Some were more precise than others, but they all got everyone to sing and stop using their hands. The dynamics were a huge hit! They wanted to take turns leading fortes and pianos. They would start out changing between them slowly and then try to get us to fluctuate dynamics really fast. Kids are so funny! Anyway, like I said, they definitely got it and had fun with it. The rhythm activities went better than planned. They were all aware of the tempo, which I wasn't expecting, so it made it super easy to advance to holding whole notes, half notes, etc. A couple of kids took some practicing to keep their hands touching during counting to 4 or 2, but we just started saying, "Hug, 2, 3, 4. Hug, 2, 3, 4." There was lots of laughing at this point, and they were all doing it and enjoying it (which is the point of Musical Playtime). The animal rhythms went well, but we ran out of time before we really got into it. Since they've already been introduced to it, I'll just use it again next week and it should be great. I might use a picture of the animal instead of words since they can't all read.

Overall, what a fun day! I am so happy!

Some general ideas...

Well, just to get everyone thinking about different ideas for basic music playtime with any age, I thought I would put on some generic activities.

These activities are for listening and responding.

• Play music on the radio or a cd and dance with your kids. Try listening to different styles and beats of music and dance more gracefully or crazy depending on the mood. It will show them that music affects our mood and can make us to feel happy, relaxed, excited, sad, silly, etc. Ask them how they feel when you play certain songs. Get them thinking while they're playing! This is also just a great thing to do to get to know your kids better and spend time with them. (you can use this activity for any age and just adapt)
• For a quiet time activity turn on some music and have your kids draw what they see or how they feel when they are listening to it. Like I said before, try different styles: classical, rock, country, funk, jazz, blues, etc. Suggest using shapes, squiggles, landscapes, or any other drawing method.
  
• Play some music and have the children take turns telling you a story about what is happening...a knight is trying to save a princess and the ogre is chasing him! He's running as fast as he can...it can be any story. They will have fun using their imaginations.
• As you're watching a movie and talk about how the music changes when different things are going on-having fun, running, feeling sad, or big dramatic moments. Again, this teaches them how music can affect the way we feel.

These are hands-on activities.

• Fill different size containers with beans, rice, sand, rocks, or anything you can find to make instruments. Discuss how they all have unique sounds. Let the children experiment with them. Have them sing a familiar song (Twinkle Twinkle or Mary Had a Little Lamb) and hit or shake their new instrument on every word. For more advanced kids, they could tap the beat.
  
• This is a fun rhythm game. Pick a theme (or don't, it's your choice) and have the kids think of words that go along with it. We'll use food since I love food -eggs, waffles, pancakes, toast- eggs becomes: 1 quarter note, waffles: 2 eighth notes, pancakes: 2 eighth notes, toast: 1 quarter note. Tap a steady beat and then say the words. If this is confusing, I'll post a video of myself doing it. Continue picking different words. Work up to 3 or 4 syllable words (3=triplets, 4=quadruplets).
  

Well, that's going to be it for now, but I will be posting new ideas regularly. As I said before, any suggestions are welcome and encouraged. Keep music alive in our homes!

Welcome to Musical Playtime!

I have been meaning to start a website about Musical Playtime for a while now, but I'm just bad at making decisions, so I decided just to get some ideas flowing with a blog since it's less stressful (hopefully!!). Well, I should start by sharing a few of my ideas. Two very important beliefs to me are: 1.) I believe that children learn quickly through play, structured and unstructured; and 2.) I believe that children learn quickly through music, structured and unstructured. Learning by these two means (play and music) also shows significant results in retention of knowledge. So, if you can learn something quickly and retain it indefinitely, there are no limits! They say the sky's the limit, but it's not true...there is much more out there to discover!

With all of that said, my long-term goal in this project is to find ways to teach children (and adults) all different subjects by using play and music. Doesn't that sound fun? Now, since that is a daunting task, I will need a lot of help in discovering new ideas and programs. My short-term goal is to develop ideas for teaching music. I have a deep love of music! I have always had it. Music is a communication that reaches beyond speech or even body language. Music has the power to reach directly to your soul-body, mind, and spirit. Music has a powerful influence...for good and for bad. Let us teach our children to love the good music. Help them to discover their abilities to express themselves through music.

It can start from as early as the womb. My son loves music! I was in a large band when I was pregnant and even then he loved the sounds and vibrations. He was so used to the sound of music when he was born that he would sleep through a 200 piece band without even stirring. I took him to band with me one day in his carrier and I play low brass, so he was sitting back with me by the tubas, euphoniums, trombones, and percussion. Everyone thought he would wake up, but he just slept peacefully. When he was awake, he would sing along even at just a couple months old. I thought it was a coincidence, so I stopped playing...he stopped singing. I started playing again...he started singing. I just hope that I can continue to share my love of music with him throughout his life. It has been said that when you bind a memory to an emotion, it will last forever. My clearest memories have musical soundtracks to accompany them! Sometimes, it's also been music that I have created. Now that is an incredible feeling!

I think anyone can have those feelings of fulfillment and satisfaction with any creation. Whether you are a mother, cook, scrapbooker, decorator, construction worker, smiler, baker, flower arranger, or gardener (or anything else), you are a creator! To create means: to cause to come into existence. You don't have to be the typical "creative" type to be a creator. Be you!

Now, Musical Playtime is for teaching creativity, tonal awareness, rhythm, pitch, singing, composing, experimentation, fun, and most of all - listening. When you take the time to listen, you can learn so much! If you listen to a wise man, you will learn wisdom. If you listen to a bird singing in the morning, you will learn it's song. If you listen to your heart, it will teach you all things that are possible to learn!

I am here to listen to you and to share my ideas back. Let us help each other to find ways to raise children up to be creative, innovative, smart, and courageous. Let's start the training of the future leaders of our country and the world.