Co-op Activities - March 19, 2013

I participate in an informal co-op with two other moms, where we basically trade off hosting each others kids  on a weekly basis.  It was my turn to host the big kids (who are now all 5 or almost 5), so I thought I might try some music activities with them.

Ages: 3 five-year-olds (well one is almost 5), 1 three year old

Plan:

Making Ice Cream - Peanut Butter Chocolate 

Bongo making with balloon tops if we can find enough containers.
http://deceptivelyeducational.blogspot.com/2012/05/boppin-on-diy-bongo-drums.html
Learning Rhythms with the percussion instruments

Lego building (because the legos have been hiding in RJ's room for too long since L's birthday party in early February) - maybe they could design their own lego instrument models?

How it went: 

Co-op was significantly shorter than normal with our friends coming over later than planned, so I made the bongo drums with RJ and L.  The kids didn't really want to decorate them when we started and wanted to go straight to the drumming, so I admit that I ended up doing a lot of the work, especially putting the balloons over the canisters.  Unlike the version made in the website I cited for my inspiration, we did not use duct tape to hold on the balloons, opting instead to cut the center out of the lid, using only the rim to hold the balloon on.  The boys helped, but this was definitely not as hands on as I would've liked, until they started to play them at least!

I ended up making the ice cream on my own due to lack of interest, the legos and other toys being the bigger draw today.

We never really got around to learning rhythms, either, as the kids really just wanted to have some free play with their limited time, and I didn't want to push them into doing anything they weren't into.

Activities - Monday March 18, 2013

Plan:

1.) Listen by instrument on the computer - try to name the instrument, talk about pitch and how bigger instruments are typically lower pitched, although there is range overlap.

http://www.sfskids.org/templates/instorchframe.asp?pageid=3

2.) Try to match singing pitch with the keyboard.

How it went:

1.) I initially wanted RJ to not look at the computer and guess which instrument was playing, but he and L had other plans that included peeking.  This didn't really hurt though since for the few that they did guess at, they were mostly wrong.  With looking at the screen, they were able to see the instrument, which allowed them to have the visual too.  So, this is just one of those activities where you have expectations about how it will go, but it all turns out in the end if you allow the children to modify the plan.  I was planning on showing them the instruments when we talked about pitch and how it relates to the size of the instrument, which is most prominently seen in the string instruments; violin, viola, cello, and double bass.  

2.) RJ seemed to do reasonably well for the few notes we tried, but L decided that it was time to play his drums, which led RJ to screaming like a rock star instead of actually singing.  What was neat was that L was approximating a rhythm that I had taught him on the drums, before RJ's screaming reduced it to random banging.  It was a start, and certainly musical play!

Music Theme Activities - Thursday March 14, 2013

Our Tuesday and Wednesday were busy this week, but Thursday provided us with an opportunity for some structured activities related to music.

Plan: 

1.)  Music note worksheet for RJ (I'm actually going to slip this in with his homework since he's likely to resist any sort of worksheet if it's in addition to his homework, which he generally despises).  I normally despise worksheets too, but I wanted to see how this one would go, and I wanted to see if he remembered any of the note values from Monday.

2.) Music Mat Activity

From: http://deceptivelyeducational.blogspot.com/2012/01/music-measure-of-math.html

3.) Drinking Straw Pan Flute

From: http://deceptivelyeducational.blogspot.com/2012/04/making-magic-drinking-straw-flute.html

How it went:

1.) While he was skeptical that this was actually part of his school homework (smart kid!), he went along with doing it anyway.  While I might be biased in saying this, he did seem more engaged in this worksheet than the standard math worksheets he gets from school.  He is still working on remembering how many beats per note, but we've only introduced this, and he's remembering a lot.  I will have to try some more complicated math problems with notes, since once he translated the notes into numbers, his answers came pretty fast.

2.) I LOVE this music mat activity.  It was good for further learning the beat values of the notes and rests, and then required RJ to utilize his mathmatical reasoning to put together various combinations of notes (numbers) that add up to 4.  Plus, it was NOT a pencil and paper activity, which helped keep his interest because he's been rejecting any sort of pencil-and-paper activity because he is inundated with them at school.  While it was clearly more for RJ than L, L did seem interested enough to watch and he even (accidentally) put a whole note in a measure, which was a correct solution!  RJ made L feel really good by complimenting him on doing the right thing, and we made sure to tell him that a whole note was 4 beats and so it had a measure all to itself.  RJ liked the hands on aspect of it and worked through a couple of different combinations of notes and rests to make 4 beat measures.  This was also our introduction to rests.  We will definitely take this out again! (In fact, we did break it out again today to show daddy!)

Yes, he's dressed as Harry Potter. 

3.) I think I have a new favorite blog, because the drinking straw pan flute was also a success.  It obviously doesn't sound like much, because it is made of drinking straws.  However, its simplicity was key here.  I liked that L (age 3) was able to participate quite a lot.  He was able to cut the straws on the lines (that RJ and I measured together), and helped tape them together.  And he liked cutting the straws on the line so much that he kept cutting at the scrap ends of the straws too.  So he got more cutting practice!  And RJ not only learned that the shorter straws had the higher pitch, but also got some good practice counting by twos when we measured where to cut the straws to vary the pitch (each straw got shorter by 2 centimeters and I made him tell me the total that we had to measure for each one).  Overall, a very successful project!

Music Theme Activities Monday March 11, 2013

I am resuming the music theme.  Kindergarten (and its homework) and other activities have overrun our life for too long.  It's time to get some more planned learning into our schedule.  So, today, we're going to do some music stuff for an hour, because that's the time we have between all the other stuff (grocery shopping, school, gymnastics, playground time, making dinner, etc.).   After a critical look at our schedule, we should get at least an hour, and sometimes more for one or both kids, for these planned activities every day but Wednesday. I want to make sure that with them getting older and having more scheduled, structured activities and school/pre-school that they still have lots of outdoor play time and free play at home (when I am not playing with them unless invited), but I don't want to abandon our themed learning play either, so here we are.

Plan:

1.)  Introduce the staff and G clef, and whole notes, half notes, and quarter notes, play scales

2.)  Draw to the Music (use classical music from my iPod)

3.)  Free note placement on the staff paper

How it went:

1.) L had no interest, but he's three, so it's quite a bit advanced for him.  He was much more entertained by trying to erase my lines on the white board.  RJ was resistant at first, but then he wanted to copy what I was showing him and that kept him engaged.  We talked about how the placement on the staff determined the pitch, denoted by letters A - G, why the treble clef is called a "G-clef", and talked about whole notes being 4 beats, half notes being 2 beats (which he reasoned by thinking through what half of four was), and then quarter notes as 1 beat.  I drew out a two octave scale (key of C) in whole notes so he would see it.

He was interested in hearing a scale, so we went to the keyboard and I showed him how one could sing a scale and play one on the keyboard.  Then we got out the recorder (for him) and flute (for me) so we could practice playing whole notes.  He learned the fingering for middle C.

2.) I actually thought painting to the music would be better than drawing, so I got the paint out for their easel, popped on some classical music from the iPod and told them to paint like the music feels. RJ seemed to really get into it and his paint strokes seemed to match the music.  L just painted.  But he's three, so exposure is really my goal at this point for him.

3.)  We didn't get to this, so we will go for it another day.


Conclusion:

It feels good to get back into the swing of doing planned activities again.  I feel RJ really learned something and L got some exposure to classical music (as opposed to classic rock, top 40, broadway standards, and glee covers that we usually listen to), as well as some expressive painting time.  Overall, this is a win.  And I posted on the blog again....finally.