IPS/Butler University Laboratory School

It was a wonderful, peaceful, and happy day today. This morning, we learned two new sight words, come and from, and we had a blast creating new jingles to help us remember them. The one for come is really beautiful, have your child sing it to you! I love how our class has been collaborating on creating music together for our sight words- it seems to fit so well with our Listening/Sound project!

This week, we are also examining different holidays that are celebrated around this time of year. Today, we learned about the traditions of Hanukkah and compared and contrasted them to traditions we know for Christmas. We had a great discussion about whether it was OK or not for people to celebrate different holidays (we decided it was, because “Everyone can be different”- BreAnna). We also read a story about a child who celebrated both of those holidays, which we also decided was ok (“Another different thing, an ok thing!”- Makenzi). We look forward to delving into more traditions as the week goes on.

Tags: collaboration, curious, differences, holidays, music, project, sound, traditions

Yesterday at the Rhythm Discovery Center, we learned that forte means loud and piano means soft. Today, we experimented with dancing to music that was forte and piano. When the music got really loud, friends were encouraged to make their bodies “big”, reach tall, and do big movements. When the music was piano, we crouched down low, were quiet, and made small movements.

Tags: curious, music, project, sound

Today we went on our field trip to the Rhythm Discovery Center downtown! It was incredible! The Rhythm Discovery Center is basically “An instrument museum” (Greyson’s words).  We learned about  different types of instruments, many we had never seen or heard of before! Our guide was fabulous and gave us an opportunity to play many of the instruments, including a giant tam tam and a giant gong! At the end of our visit, we formed a drum circle and played with our guide. We practiced playing fast and slow, soft (piano) and loud (forte). Afterwards, we had some freestyle time and friends were given the opportunity to play and dance. It was such a joyful time.

Afterwards, we had lunch in the Indianpolis Arts Garden. To our delight, several choirs were there singing Christmas carols. It was such a peaceful and enjoyable lunch! I was so proud too, our class had many compliments about how good of an audience we were being. I was so glad our class was able to end our field trip with a real life performance- it just seems fitting. The perfect ending to the perfect day!

Tags: field trip, music, project, sound

All this week, we have been exploring sound patterns. Thursday and today, friends were invited to figure out how they could incorporate instruments into their sound patterns. Coincidentally, this also opened up the idea of teaching other friends our song patterns which started the idea of bands and orchestras. It has been a pleasure to watch the kids communicate with one another and become excited about teaching and learning one anothers’ songs. Today, I asked the kids to think about what music was. Without discussion, the kids were invited to create illustrations and drawings of music. Next week, we will talk together about the concept of music and revisit these pictures. It was exciting to see much of our learning about sound incorporated into friends’ pictures, such as sound waves, vibration, and pitch.

Tags: curious, music, project, sound, thinking

This week, we have been talking a lot about patterns and how they may connect to sound and listening. We have been practicing creating patterns in many ways, including creating them with our bodies. Our friends love trying out other friends’ body patterns. It feels like dancing!

This morning  friends were presented with several patterns that I had drawn. A simple ABAB pattern, an AABB pattern, and a few others. After talking about characteristics of patterns, I then posed the question to them, “How can you incorporate this with sound?”

Almost immediately, Makenzi mentioned that she had been playing the piano in the big studio with Mrs. Grotjan and had followed along with something that looked like a pattern that told her what notes to play. That gave us the idea that we could create music to these patterns!

We tried singing high pitches and low pitches to the ABAB pattern. Then we tried with some of the other patterns. When a new pattern gave us a third option, one friend suggested clapping instead of singing for that portion. This then inspired us to create our own song patterns. We had so much fun creating and sharing them!

Tags: music, patterns, project, sound