Wednesday, October 30, 2024 | Bridge Lessons

Wednesday, October 30, 2024 | Brown Teddy Bears Lessons

Lesson #9

Sound Beginnings believes all children are musical by nature, but need some guidance to refine their natural interest into skill and develop the musician already present within each child. By participating in class, listening to the CDs at home, and encouraging your children to explore music, you are growing a musician!

Next week we'll sing these in class:

• The Four Seasons
• In My Class I Have Some Bells
• Here is the Beehive
• Snowman
• Down By the Bay
• A Tisket, A Tasket
• Baby Bumblebee
• March
• Old Brass Wagon
• You Are My Sunshine

Sound Beginnings encourages children to express themselves, try new things, and enjoy the world of make believe! Dancing expressively to classical music, exploring with instruments, and dramatizing stories help develop children’s natural desire to be creative. Creativity builds confidence in children and helps develop problem-solving skills that carry into adulthood.

In our ABC Song, the "unvoiced" sounds do not have a vowel sound attached. Pronouncing these sounds correctly will help your children as they start to sound out words they are reading.

Dramatizing a story through a song improves language development and develops a child's understanding of themselves and the world around them.

Optional home fun activity: Color the Flight of the Bumblebee dance on page 16 in your workbook    
(Remember, these activities are optional but can be a great bonding experience to do with your child during the week.)  

Here's a video about Vivaldi, who wrote 4 violin concertos named "The Four Seasons".

Here's a videowith the music to "The Four Seasons" and a fun animation that you can watch or just put on in the background and appreciate! Better yet, go ahead and dance to it! It's 40 minutes long, and it's so beautiful! Enjoy!

Sound Beginnings is education through musical play! It prepares children for success in Kindergarten and Let’s Play Music. Sound beginnings provides research-based elements that stimulate growth in the areas particularly crucial to the development of the young child. These elements make up the foundation of the Sound Beginnings curriculum.  Here is just one:
	Sound Beginnings channels the young voice into beautiful, in-tune singing by providing proper vocal modeling in the correct range. Solfege hand signs teach pitch relationships; the minor 3rd (SOL-MI) pattern is used to develop in-tune singing and pitch matching.

Have a musical day!  
-Ms. Bethany :)

Tuesday, October 29, 2024 | Purple Magic Lessons

Lesson #9

It was fun having you in class this week! Thank you for coming! The children really enjoy parent days! Tuition is due for those that didn't pay for the semester up front. 

Please Marco Polo your child playing the Showtime song "Halloween Night" so we can spend class time doing more fun things!

We are teaching the children to transpose, which means to read notes in one key and play them in another. This is difficult for most people, but since we have spent so much time on note relationships (steps, skips, leaps, intervals and chords) it comes more easily to our Let’s Play Music students. Also, remember that this concept will sink in as the children continue to play songs and exercises in various keys. As they play and sing “Magic Keys,” they will come to understand why F is DO and C is SOL. We are also teaching the children to improvise, which is adding more than just what is written in the music. Next semester, we will do more of this.

We have a new puppet show! Your puppets are printed in the back of your book, so please encourage your child to color, cut out, and use them! Also, they are in the Student Portal on www.musikandme.com, if  you need to reprint them!

Celebrate Connection

• Have parent sing while child plays, then switch places! Now both sing together!
• Name that tune! Child closes eyes and parent plays the first notes of a song... in how few notes can the child name a song?

Let's Play Music
Wait a minute? This song isn't new! Using a song that our ears and fingers are VERY familiar with is a perfect stepping stone for being able to transpose. That's just a fancy word for reading notes in one key and playing in another. And it's kind of a big deal!! All the background in solfege, intervals, and skips and steps makes transposing super easy. We’ll have many more chances to transpose it this year.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transposition_(music)
   
Magic Keys
We are teaching the children to transpose, which means to read notes in one key and play them in another. This is difficult for most people, but since we have spent so much time on note relationships (steps, skips, leaps, intervals and chords) it comes more easily to our Let’s Play Music students. This concept will sink in as the children continue to play songs and exercises in various keys. As they play and sing “Magic Keys,” they will come to understand why F is DO and C is SOL.

Halloween Night
We played something in class that wasn't written in the book! That is called "improvising" and it is a wonderful skill to have. We'll do more of this next semester! 

Kitty Casket
Yep, you probably already guessed it. Similar to our 'Scratch My Back' game, this helps us feel that unresolved half cadence with our whole bodies! But, this time we will have the opportunity to play it with our hands as well. 

Song of Joy
We have listened to this piece a lot in class, and hopefully, they are listening to it at home, too, because we are modeling. This is a method of teaching that plays the full piece over and over so that the sound gets in the students’ ear and they will hear the full orchestration when they play it on the piano. This is a step up from audiation, which is simply hearing the music in the head. Remind your child to imagine what it sounds like as they play it. Remember, Beethoven heard it in his head, too. 

Now that we have introduced the spaces in the bass clef, you will appreciate this educational parody of Meghan Trainor's music "All About That Bass" that reinforces the notes of the bass clef in a fun way! 

I've added the Skaters Coloring book for you to download, if you wish. Log in at www.musikandme.com and you can download, print and let your child color the characters as you discuss their favorite part about the puppet show! (Can you hear the characters that you are coloring?) Cut them out to make your own puppets!

Here is a link to all the skills videos as well as the link to be able to purchase a class video to make up for a missed class. (tap or scan)

Have a musical day!
-Ms. Bethany :)

Wednesday, October 23, 2024 | Bridge Lessons

Wednesday, October 23, 2024 | Brown Teddy Bears Lessons

Lesson #8

Are you wondering why we have so much fun in class? It’s because research shows that play is the most effective pathway to learning. During play, failure is not a deterrent to trying again, problem solving takes place through testing and evaluation, and repetition builds security. As concepts and skills are presented in a playful, joyful setting, children absorb knowledge and ability. 

Next week we'll sing these in class:

• The Four Seasons
• Name the Instruments
• Major Scale
• Flight of the Bumblebee
• Baby Bumblebee
• A Tisket, A Tasket
• Old Brass Wagon
• You Are My Sunshine

Sound Beginnings builds its curriculum upon seven elements proven to stimulate growth in areas particularly crucial to the development of the young child: Literacy and Kindergarten Skills, Rhythm and Beat, Vocal and Pitch Development, Fine Motor Skills, Gross Motor Skills, Classical Music Experience and Parent Bonding. Together these elements give children a rich foundation for further music study, school, and life.

The letter of the day activity allows us to focus on recognizing a single letter, its sound, and its ASL sign. You can build on this activity each week by looking for things that start with the letter of the day at home.

Dance is not only great exercise, it incorporates gross motor skills and improves balance, coordination and spatial awareness.

Optional home fun activity: Make the bee puppet on page 31 in your workbook    
(Remember, these activities are optional but can be a great bonding experience to do with your child during the week.)  

Here's a video of another Let's Play Music teacher singing a happy "sunshine-y" song! 

Sound Beginnings is education through musical play! It prepares children for success in Kindergarten and Let’s Play Music. Sound beginnings provides research-based elements that stimulate growth in the areas particularly crucial to the development of the young child. These elements make up the foundation of the Sound Beginnings curriculum.  Here is just one:
	A child learns when he or she feels loved. In class, purposeful touching, eye contact, partner activities, and generational nostalgia help develop the all-important parent/child relationship.

Have a musical day!  
-Ms. Bethany :)

Tuesday, October 22, 2024 | Purple Magic Lessons

Lesson #8

Next week is PARENT WEEK and tuition is due for those of you paying monthly! You can scan the QR code to the right in your banking app to pay via Zelle (or just use my phone number).

There is magic in the air! We've learned everything we need to know to play "Magic Keys" the whole way through! Please be sure your child is using the correct fingers on the chords and on the transitioning scale. Remember to play B-flat any time you see a "B" in the key of F! Please let me know if you have any questions about this!  
   
Celebrate Connection

• Have parent sing while child plays, then switch places! Now both sing together!
• Name that tune! Child closes eyes and parent plays the first notes of a song... in how few notes can the child name a song?

Song of Joy
After experiencing it with our bodies, your child is ready to execute this tricky upbeat rhythm with their fingers. This song is also an opportunity to play as part of an ensemble in class and to audiate the model in their head while playing on their own. 

Speaking of playing as an ensemble staff, check out this live instrument flash mob of Ode to Joy in Spain! 

How's it going with your flashcards? Have you shuffled in the treble clef lines yet? Click here for an online game to quiz your student on all of the treble clef notes we have learned so far! 

You may also take advantage of my Quizlet games that I've set up on my website! 

Here is a link to all the skills videos as well as the link to be able to purchase a class video to make up for a missed class. (tap or scan)

Have a musical day!
-Ms. Bethany :)

Wednesday, October 16, 2024 | Bridge Lessons

Wednesday, October 9, 2024 | Brown Teddy Bears Lessons

Lesson #7

Even young infants who do not show outward signs of learning are actually gaining from attending Sound Beginnings. A baby’s brain is highly sensitized to stimulus and will develop synapses based on the type of input received. Social engagement, pleasant interaction, movement, sounds, and patterns occurring in music will all stimulate the infant brain and enhance development.

Next week we'll sing these in class:

• Weather Bear
• Here is the Beehive
• Baby Bumblebee
• Name the Instruments
• Snowman
• Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?
• Baby Bumblebee
• Flight of the Bumblebee
• Old Brass Wagon
• You Are My Sunshine

The development of the singing voice grows from a child’s natural desire to imitate. Children may sing spontaneously because it is joyous, playful, personal, expressive, and creative. By age 4 or 5, many children have developed their singing range; typically from the pitches of middle C to treble C. Sound Beginnings songs are designed to fall within children’s natural range.

Our transition activity allows us to feel steady beat and experience subdivision!

When children engage in pretend play they develop cognitive flexibility and creativity.

Optional home fun activity: Color the Weather Bear and cut out his clothes on pages 21-25 in your workbook      
(Remember, these activities are optional but can be a great bonding experience to do with your child during the week.)  

Here's a fun video of The Flight of the Bumblebee played on piano with a fun visual of all the notes that are in this fast song!

And I found this and just had to share because I thought it was so funny!

Sound Beginnings is education through musical play! It prepares children for success in Kindergarten and Let’s Play Music. Sound beginnings provides research-based elements that stimulate growth in the areas particularly crucial to the development of the young child. These elements make up the foundation of the Sound Beginnings curriculum. Here is just one:
	Research has shown that singing improves reading. Our classes prepare children for kindergarten by exploring concepts and skills such as name recognition, alphabet and phonetic awareness, counting, identifying colors, rhyming, telling time, and sequencing.

Have a musical day!    
-Ms. Bethany :)

Tuesday, October 8, 2024 | Bridge Lessons

Tuesday, October 8, 2024 | Purple Magic Lessons

Lesson #7

Thank you for having your children listen to the soundtrack at home! It is so wonderful to have the kids able to sing along in class when we are learning new concepts. Knowing the songs before they know what we're doing with them really helps them to be able to make that connection solid when I explain and demonstrate the songs in class (especially our "Magic Keys" song)!

Please have you child practice and send me a Marco Polo (or text or email video) for the Showtime song "Alouette" this week. I will mainly be checking to see if they know their intervals in the left hand, if they know what to do when they see the repeat sign and where to end the song. It is so much less intimidating for the kids to do it at home, rather than to be put on the spot in class. Also, if there's something your child has been able to play well that they are extremely proud of, I'd love for you to send me a video of it, either Marco Polo or just text (if it is short enough to go through). 

We learned the direction of note stems this week: if it's below the 3rd line, the stem points up, but once it gets on the 3rd line or above, the stem points down. It works the same way in both treble and bass clefs.

We learned about 3/4 time and that it sounds like "lol-ly-pop" (pat, clap, snap) instead of "wa-ter-mel-on" (pat, clap, snap, clap) which is what 4/4 time sounds like.    
     
Celebrate Connection

• Have parent play LH and student play RH in a song, then switch places!
• The parent does 3 jumping jacks each time the student plays a song! Then the student can do 3 jumping jacks when the parent plays a song!

F Major Cadence
How exciting to play our primary chords in a new key! We will learn to strengthen and stretch our fingers in a new way. The fingerings will feel familiar, but we will also need to use our newly acquired knowledge about 'magic keys' as well as our ear training to play our chords correctly.
     
A Royal Problem
Like all of our puppet shows, 'A Royal Problem' (Mozart's Symphony No. 40 in G minor, 3rd movement) aids in the intelligent listening of classical music. We learned to recognize major and minor tonalities, staccato and legato themes, and continued our study of classical ABA (ternary) form. 

F Major Cadence

Note naming on the Treble Clef

Our Royal Problem puppet show is really the 3rd Movement of Symphony No. 40 in G Minor, by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. This work has elicited varying interpretations from critics, but the most common perception today is that the symphony is tragic in tone and intensely emotional. Watch a full orchestra performance below. As you watch with your student, ask them to label the A (problem) and B (not a problem) section for you. This will prepare them for their homework next week. 

  

Here is a link to all the skills videos as well as the link to be able to purchase a class video to make up for a missed class. (tap or scan)

Have a musical day!
-Ms. Bethany :)

Wednesday, October 2, 2024 | Brown Teddy Bears Lessons

Lesson #6

Research has shown that from birth to the age of 9 years is the optimal time to expose children to music, and Sound Beginnings takes advantage of the earliest portion of this music-learning window. Meaningful exposure to music at a young age means musical skills will be more easily learned and internalized.   

Next week we'll sing these in class:

• Weather Bear
• Baby Bumblebee
• Here is the Beehive
• Snowman
• Major Scale
• Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?
• Grizzly Bear
• Going to the Zoo
• Old Brass Wagon
• Flight of the Bumblebee
• Lavender's Blue

In music, solfege is a method used to teach pitch and sight singing and can be utilized at every level of music education. The brain connects more easily with pitch relationships if a syllable is attached, and hand signs physically reinforce those relationships. Singing melodies in solfege helps the student develop inner hearing, musical expressiveness, and a feeling for phrasing.

Learning sign language improves a child's vocabulary, spelling proficiency, and fine motor skills.

Rhythm instruments help children increase gross and fine motor skills, reinforce hand-eye coordination, and help develop a sense of beat and rhythm.

Optional home fun activity: Color the Four Seasons on page 4 in your workbook    
(Remember, these activities are optional but can be a great bonding experience to do with your child during the week.)  

Here's a video about the seasons that just happens to also have a brown bear in it! That one is a little long, so here's a shorter video about the seasons!

Sound Beginnings is education through musical play! It prepares children for success in Kindergarten and Let’s Play Music. Sound beginnings provides research-based elements that stimulate growth in the areas particularly crucial to the development of the young child. These elements make up the foundation of the Sound Beginnings curriculum.  Here is just one:
	Peek into a Sound Beginnings class and you will see skipping, crawling, dancing, and jumping! Full body movement builds large muscle strength, hand-eye coordination, aids brain-hemisphere function, and develops balance in young children.

Have a musical day!  
-Ms. Bethany :)

Wednesday, October 2, 2024 | Bridge Lessons

Tuesday, October 1, 2024 | Purple Magic Lessons

Lesson #6

Thank you for sending the videos of our Showtime song, "Bounce and Roll"! It really helped to not have to listen to every student during class time. If you didn't send a video of "Bounce and Roll" this time, you can still send it. Also, there's another Showtime coming up for lesson 8.

Please be sure your child is using the correct fingers for the C minor cadence. They don't need to play fast, but the correct fingers are a necessity. Switching between the chords will become much faster the more they practice.

Please be sure your child is listening to and learning the lyrics to "Magic Keys" and "Our Bugs are So Fun". Remember, we use music to teach music and the lyrics are wonderful teachers in these songs!      
   
Celebrate Connection

• See how many times your child can switch between the minor red and minor blue chords in 30 seconds... then see if you can beat that number! 
• Try switching back and forth from major red to minor red with your eyes closed. Then do it with major blue and minor blue with your eyes closed.

Ode to Joy
We practiced hearing downbeats last year, now we’re listening for the  upbeats as well. The downbeat is the first beat of the measure, and the upbeat just precedes that stronger downbeat. This song helps us feel that with our bodies --- and helps us to get to know a little bit about Ludwig van Beethoven along the way!

Halloween Night
This 'spooky' song is a great repertoire piece to give us a little more practice on our C minor cadence. Hands will play together in our new 3/4 time signature, and we will even have an opportunity to try a bit of improvisation as the semester continues. 

Even the Muppets like to have a little fun with the upbeat in Ode to Joy.

  

Here is a link to all the skills videos as well as the link to be able to purchase a class video to make up for a missed class. (tap or scan)

Have a musical day!
-Ms. Bethany :)