A Gallery of Activities in Music Class

Links to Homemade: Strings, Percussion, Winds

Dance Basics

When students place right thumb up and left thumb down before holding hands, everyone's grip is the same. Circle games and dances are easy after this first step!

Great Big House in New Orleans

Third graders are learning American play-party songs. Most have a movement game, too. This complex weave is a tricky move, but essential to performing this song!

Great Big House and Tideo have similar melodic patterns, including our favorite,
sol-la-mi!

The Crossover Bordun

A bordun is an accompaniment played on the lowest sounding xylophone. The crossover bordun includes three scale tones, do, sol, and do above. The left hand crosses over.

Drury Lane Theater Trip

"The Sound of Music" at Drury Lane Theater was the destination for 6th graders. They enjoyed the top notch singing and acting, and-- bonus! On the way home we saw the CTA Christmas Train!

Click the picture to see the 6th graders at Drury Lane.

3rd graders learned to sing "Built My Lady a Fine Brick House" and then added instruments: our bass xylophone, alto metallophone and several glockenspiels. Finally, we brainstormed ideas, and invented a classroom game so we could move, sing and play. At left, the scarves are the walls of the house!

Barnyard Lullaby

The 5th Graders are composers! Small groups composed melodies for each verse of the lullabies in this book. In May, the students performed the lullabies for the Kindergarten classes.

Good work, Grade 5!

8th graders enjoyed their last field trip of the school year when they attended Million Dollar Quartet on Wednesday.To get in the mood for rock 'n' roll we had lunch at Ed Debevic's!

Click the picture to see more of our day!

8th Grade Rock Unit

Exploring Strings

Folk Dance

2nd graders enjoyed learning "Shake Them 'Simmons Down" and "Old Dan Tucker in Music Class.

Seconds graders are finding out how to change the sounds of strings and rubber bands in Music class.

Opera Prop and Stage Set Project

Look at the amazing projects last year's 7th graders constructed! Our final assignment was to make a set design, construct a set or construct a prop. Some of our props would rival those at Lyric Opera! The sets represent a scene from Carmen, and the props should be suitable for use in an opera.

Click the Act III Stage Set for a movie of our creations.

The movie was is a "slide show" project in Adobe Photoshop Elements.

Canoe Song

4th graders learned a great arrangement of Canoe Song for Orff instruments (the 2 xylophones and glockenspiels). A some students play the accompaniment, others keep the beat with a stone-passing game, and another group paddles the canoe!

Ma Co Way

7th graders practice keeping beats in triple meter with a singing game. The patterns made with sticks get increasingly more difficult!

Singing, Acting

Third graders learned "One Bird," a song using only 'do' and 're.' Groups of students ten incorporated the song into a simple play in Music class.

John Kanaka

A new favorite singing game! In a double circle, players get a new partner every verse.

50 Nifty United States

Every Spring the 4th graders learn this song to go with their Social Studies unit on the states.

5th graders attend Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater every Spring in Chicago's fabulous Auditorium Theater.

Click the picture to see a short slide show of the instruments.

Multicultural Instruments

Mrs. Lynn Allen from District 97 brought a collection of musical instruments from around the world to Ascension. 6th graders are researching instruments from around the world, so it was great to see some up close, and to play them. Thanks, Mrs. Allen!

First graders learned about glockenspiels and then played along with a lullaby, "Bye'm Bye." Students love to play a glissando!

"Way Down Yonder in the Paw Paw Patch"

Click the puffball to see a movie of the game Obwisanna.

Obwisanna

Students learn a passing game from Ghana. It won't work unless you can keep the beat!

Boomwhacker Game

The person in the middle chooses which friend to 'sashay' down the center with, and hands off the Boomwhacker. That person gets to choose next. . .continue!

First graders are learning to read music! This card shows the opening phrase of "Queen Caroline." Students match small foam hearts with rhythm patterns to the rhythm pattern of the song.

Two Ascension students, Maggie and Damian, submitted entries to the Illinois Music Educator's Association's annual Cover Art contest! Winners were announced in January 2009. Damian's picture, at left, received an Honorable Mention! Congratulations!

Caught in A Spider Web

3rd and 4th graders learn (or review) the letter names of the treble lines and spaces while playing the Spider Web game around Halloween. Students check answers for each other and the winner gets a prize!

Recital Day

Ascension students may perform for their classmates for "Recital Day" -- an informal concert!

"Stick Notation" is used by younger students for writing rhythm. We got hands on practice with coffee stirs, and notated "Lucy Locket."

Folk Dance

Many junior high classes learned a Swedish folk dance with tapping sticks in Music class. It seemed easy enough until the music gradually got faster and faster!

Why Do We Dance?

Students perform social dances, and, while having fun, learn about taking turns, appropriate touching, eye contact, choosing and being a partner, self-control and learning to wait! Naturally this is in addition to singing and keeping a beat while performing a specific sequence of motions.
Students learn a lot of folk dances: Heel and Toe, Goin' Down to Cairo, Shoo Fly , and a new favorite, Sellenger's Round. Some songs have non-locomotor actions, as in "I've Benn to Haarlem" below right. It has a very popular 'Cup Game!"

2nd graders enjoy our series of songs from Africa. We learn "Ise Oluwa" from Nigeria and "Che Che Koolay" from Ghana. "Che Che Koolay" is a call and response song, so while one group plays instruments, the second group sings and performs a movement, and the third group replies with the same gestures.

Grade 1

First graders learn many short songs with the musical syllables "sol" and "mi." One song is "Snail, Snail," which the children sing as they coil into a spiral, like a snail's shell. Part of the fun is getting out of the tight coil!

Grade 3

"Where, o where is pretty little Mary? Way down yonder in the Paw Paw Patch!" Third graders learn the song and then the game. In the picture above, "Come on, boys, let's go find her!"

The third verse has students 'peel off' and form a bridge so that the game continues with new students at the top. See photos of "Great Big House" below.

Great Big House in New Orleans

In September, the 3rd graders learn a Kentucky folk dance
to the song "Paw Paw Patch" and a play-party game to the song "Great Big House". After walking in a circle for the first verse, students split into two concentric circles to begin weaving themselves together in the second. In the final verse, students circle again, but this time moving carefully, as the circle is much smaller!

"Great Big House in New Orleans. . ."

". .to fetch a pail of water. . ."

"Put one arm around my wife. ."

"The other 'round my daughter!"

Goin' Down to Cairo!

4th graders learned a folk song from Illinois, "Goin' Down to Cairo." The dance includes moving in a grand-right-and-left movement around the circle. It's a lot of fun!

Grade 5

"Old Dan Tucker" is a folk song that was mentioned in "Little House on the Prairie," which Grade 5 is reading. They learned a reel dance in AB form.

The Pipe Organ

Guess who got to pull out an organ stop!

Mr. Anderson and Mrs. Coffman explained how a pipe organ works to both 3rd grade classes. They even got to look in the room with all the pipes.

Mr. Anderson showed the special organ shoes, and demonstrated pedal work.

Every student got a chance to look behind the facade at the pipes inside -- over 2,400 of them!

Mr. Anderson takes 3rd graders up to the Organ Loft to see "The King of Instruments" in Spring.
Look at all those Pipes!

Thanks a lot!

Heel and Toe

5th graders begin a dance unit with an easy to learn circle dance. Sung to the tune of "Little Brown Jug," the directions are the words of the song!

Tideo

The 3rd grade learned to write the complete song "Tideo" in real music notation, including correct note stem direction! Naturally we celebrated with the Texas play-party game for the song.

Homemade Instruments

Spring, 2011

Aerophones are instruments that use air to make the sound. Many third graders used pens and other hollow tubes to make real homemade flutes and pan pipes. There are usually lots of bottles, tuned with water. This year we had a digeridoo and several other long tube or pipe instruments!

Click the picture to see our instruments.

Click to watch a movie!

Grade 1 makes Membranophones and Idiophones.

Membranophones are instruments with stretched tops. Many first graders use balloons to make real homemade drums. Idiophones are instruments that make the sound of what they are made of. Each year we have excellent examples!

Some new pictures are put up every year.

The bent metal sounds like a triangle.

Assorted metal objects became wind chimes.

Bottle caps jingle like a tambourine!

This drum head was a glove.

This copper tubing sounds like a gong!

A scraped can sounds like a Guiro.

The students compared their home-made instruments to real musical instruments, and played together as a group.

Chordophones are instruments with strings!
Our 2010-2011 2nd graders made quite an assortment this year! Notice the bridges that keep the strings from touching the sound box.

String Instruments need:

• a sound box (resonator)

• a hole for the sound

• strings

• bridges