Centers in full swing!

Students in 1st through 4th grade music classes are rotating through musical centers during the month of December. Each center is designed to allow students to explore musical concepts through different means, whether it be by writing, reading, playing, or listening.

We'll start with 4th grade.

The first activity is a music & math activity called "Snowflake Shootout" on the SMART Board, in which students work to identify rhythmic notation and their values.

Next, students travel to the "Jug Band" performance station, where they perform rhythms they have previously written on the xylophone. Their rhythm compositions include quarter notes, eighth notes, sixteenth notes, and eighth-sixteenth combinations.

In the listening center, students are using iPods to listen to "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy" from The Nutcracker. After listening to the song and following key elements of the music on a listening map, students complete a listening log about what they heard.

Have you ever played "Don't Break the Ice?" We have! We're playing a musical version of the game, in which rhythms are written on the ice cubes. Before knocking out a cube, students have to read the rhythm in the row. After knocking it out, students replace that rhythm with a rest.

And finally, recorders are back. Students are reviewing the notes B, A, and G on the recorders in several written exercises. Soon, we'll be improvising our own B-A-G melodies.