October

The month of October and November were very exciting months for students a Leigh. In October, the Jr. High music students performed in the Halloween parade with bucket drums which added a lot of excitement to the Halloween Day festivities. The 5^th graders performed “Frank was a Monster” for the Kindergarten classes and also enjoyed dancing “The Monster Mash” with them. Fourth grade continued to work on the spooky song “Creatures of the Night,” learning how to play low E and D on recorder and also sing and play in a round.

Third grade had their first belt test for “Recorder Karate.” “Recorder Karate,” is a recorder book that students will be using to learn to play the recorder. Students can earn different colored belts, just as in real Karate. The way that students earn these belts is through learning and demonstrating different notes and musical concepts on the recorder. At least once a month, students have a belt test, in which they can earn different colors of belts. The order of the order of the belts are white, yellow, orange, green, purple, blue, red, brown, black. Congratulations to all the students who earned their white belt!

Second grade finished learning how to play and sing a song called “Bow, Wow, Wow,” in which they learned how to play a steady beat pattern on the Orff instruments. After that, they learned two spooky Halloween songs: “Which Witch” and “Skin and Bones. Both of these songs helped students to learn to play a steady beat pattern on Orff instruments, use the upper register of their voice and sing in a legato or smooth style.

First grade enjoyed learning an integrated literature and music lesson called “Pumpkin Soup.” This lesson was based off of a book by Helen Cooper called “Pumpkin Soup.” Students learned how to play an instrumental accompaniment on Orff instruments, timbre of different instruments, quarter rest, and the contour of the melody. Students also learned how to improvise an answer to the question “What should we put in the pumpkin soup,” using the pitches “sol” and “mi.”

Kindergarteners learned a song called “Autumn Leaves,” in which different timbre instruments were used to represent words in this song and poem. Then the students were able to move like the Autumn leaves, using different colored scarves that were mentioned in the poem.