Valentine Fun!

This week in Music Time we are having a blast learning Valentine's Day songs!
We are taking old familiar kid songs and using their tunes to make up new songs all about Valentines! The classrooms are doing a great job and we are sure spreading some love around the center.

While the students get to enjoy the familiarity of the tunes from our older songs, they are also being encourage to try them in a new way with new words and actions.

I hope you hear them being sung at home!!

We are playing a fun game that is very easy to do at home. We put on a song and dance but when the music stops we have to find a friend and give them a giant hug! When the music starts again it starts all over! Take time to be silly with your little ones, they love this!!

Have a great Day!

January 25th - 29th 2010

This week in Music & Movement Time:
We are exploring the world of timing and rhythm! Usually we would use instruments or our lummi sticks to accomplish this but, this week we are using our hands, feet and whole body. It has been a very fun week so far. The students are enjoying the fact that they get to do all kinds of silly songs to do this too.

Our last song we are doing for the older classes, is a Jazz song. The students learn a new jazzy way to sing their ABC's and then they have to try to keep the same timing without a lead voice. Every few letters the lead voice will sing just to see if the students are keeping the same jazzy style and timing as they were taught.
They have done really well with it so far!

I am very proud of them!

January 18th - 22nd 2010

This week in music class we will be exploring the world of musical beanbags!
each child will have their own beanbag. I have three different songs for them.
The first one is called "Beanbag Jump". This song will have them jumping all around. The second song is called "Beanbag Alphabet Rag". This song uses the alphabet to give direction to the students to tell them where to place the bean bag, for example A is for Arm, B is for back, and so on!
The last song is called "Beanbag Boogie" and boogie is what they will do with this song. I am sure they will have a great time and they won't even know that we are working on listening skills!!
Along with these wonderful songs we will also have our Hello Song and Goodbye Song. I am saving time for a fun song called "Silly Dancers"! This is a fun song that will have them dancing and listening to directions all at once.

I hope each of you have a great week.

Welcome Back To Music Time! January 4th - 8th

We are back and in full swing in music and movement at Kids 'R' Kids! It is very hard to believe that Christmas has come and gone and we are now in 2010. Man time flies.

This week in music class we are starting a musical "Winter" theme. We will enjoy this fun theme this week and next. The students are in for a very chilly musical time.

We are singing a silly warm up song that the classrooms really seem to like, but we have changed it to match out winter theme. It goes like this: "Mommy made me mash my snowball, I'm mad" the students start out kneeling down and using a soft voice then each time we sing it we stand taller and sing louder. They get a kick out of this and they love that they are actually allowed to use a loud voice in the classroom, I remind them only in music class of course.

This week we are exploring instruments. I have a song called "The First Skater's Waltz" that we are using. We stand in a circle and lay instruments in front of us, we then hold hands and pretend to ice skate around our pond. There is a change in the music where we then stop and pick up the instrument laying in front of us and play it. Then we lay them down and start all over again. This allows the students to experience several different types of instruments.
The toddlers are using this song but they are pretending to be musical ice skaters as we skate around the room.

If we are going to have winter then we have to have a "Snowball Song". We are using paper crumbled up as pretend snowballs. We are singing a song that allows us to work on our tempo as we find new places to put our snowball each time. The students love singing slow like robots and speeding up like the chipmunks. Then of course you can't have snowballs with out throwing them at least once, so we throw them around the room once and then clean them up so we can move on.

We then finish our music class by sitting together and singing good-bye for this week. We completely wrap up our class by then placing their hands on their head and they receive a stamp for the wonderful job they have done!

I'm looking forward to next week!
Ms. Cindy