Practicing Dexterity

Both lessons today ended up focusing a lot on finger dexterity, for different reasons. For one student, we honed in and practiced playing the keys with all five fingers, as he tends to go back to playing the keyboard with just his index finger (though he can do incredible things with it nonetheless! Especially when he starts to play with his feet and nose as well). For our other student, we had to work around the fact that he had scraped his strumming hand earlier, so he didn't want to aggravate it with playing.  Instead of working on rhythms and strumming, we focused on the fretting hand, getting the fingers to be comfortable jumping up and down between strings, which he attended to with the same studiousness he always does. Both are wonderful students and filled with talent!

Percussion Day!

The kids were on excellent behaviour today! Our circle warm up games went off well, with lots of rhythmic focus from the kids. We played some games passing the rhythm (and dance moves) around, then recalibrated and went into vocal warm-ups and singing. When it came time to pass around percussion instruments, the kids impromptu started singing Jingle Bells, which I was going to sing with them anyway! They really took to the percussion, and were surprisingly organized when putting the instruments away. We finished with What Are You Doing?, a game that has become an end of the class staple at this point.

Movement and Fun

This week we had a lot of fun with plenty of movement songs. Prior to starting our singalong circle, all the participants had a turn strumming the guitar. We jammed together and sang in unison to She’ll Be Coming ‘Round The Mountains. The parachute was also a highlight of the class.

Sing Like the Animals

Today at class we became animals! Each kid was excited to share their animal ideas, the big kids even chose animals for the babies. We took a trip to the farm so we could visit the animals and use our vices to sing like the animals, after the farm we went to the Zoo to climb the trees with the monkeys and stomp our feet like the elephants. We took the long route home through the jungle to sing a song for the sleeping lions! We can enjoy animal week without sleeping bunnies, the big kids helped the little ones hop around the room!

Learning Styles

Working with our two students back to back is an interesting teaching experience, because they are both smart and driven students with completely different learning styles. One student is intuitive with the piano and is picking up on things easily, but also gets restless easily and will get frustrated when exercises are physically difficult (like finger positioning), but he is obviously very driven to learn and play. I find the best way to get through to him is by jumping around within the lesson (and around keyboard voices) often. Our other student is a bit more reserved, and focuses so well when we start doing more physically demanding exercises (like switching between chords on the beat). His strumming is great, but I was even more impressed at his finger picking, and we began to write a new song! Can't wait to continue working with these two.

All I Want For Christmas, Is You!

This week we got to practice some more our rhythm and musical notes reading skills. Piano students also learned the chord changes for Coldplay’s song The Scientist. Ukulele students practiced songs they wanted to learn, such as All I Want for Christmas is You.

CUPS!

We are learning how to read rhythm in our vocal classes. This week we started using cups to tap out the rhythm in our music! It's quite interesting to see how an unconventional "instrument" can get everyone into the game! Everyone is excited to add cup rhythm to our music!

Passing the Rhythm Around

We had another big group today, but the kids were more focused this time around. We started off on our feet immediately, with a good shakeout and a warmup round of What Are You Doing?, our improv game from last week. Then we did some more circle games and passed call and response rhythms around the room, and the kids stayed on the beat quite well. The kids seemed like they were gelling together as a group more today, which was evident in the way they were able to sustain notes while we sang solfege (slow, then increasing in speed). We finished off singing I Feel Good, dividing the kids into the vocal lines, horn section, and hand claps. They picked it up fast!

Younger Participants

Starting this week, our Friday music class at Robertson House is now restricted to children up to 5 years old, whereas the older children will attend another program at the same time. This change made the class a lot smoother and the participants were more engaged with the songs, actions, singing and participating in general.

Sharing Songs of Meaning

I began by asking the group if they were more interested in engaging in active music making as we often do, or if they were more inclined to spend some time listening to various pieces. The group came to the consensus that they most resonated with the idea of listening and sharing music today. We began by listening to 3 Little Birds by Bob Marley, while following along with lyric sheets. Group members were then given a piece of paper and a pencil to write down a song that was meaningful to them. This could be a song that was important to their family, a song with cultural meaning, or a song that they resonated with most in that moment. Once everyone had offered a song of importance, we began listening to each one. After collectively listening to each piece of music, we engaged in a verbal discussion about the message behind the lyrics, the emotion of the song, and any memories it brought forward. Group members connected over the messages of hope, motivation, inspiration, grief, family, and strength that were conveyed across the variety of songs we listened to. As we concluded, group members were encouraged to reflect upon the music they listen to throughout the week and bring in songs to next week's session that they may wish to share.