Happy Holidays!

Congratulations Everyone! We are so pleased at how well our "Celebrations across the Nations" concert turned out on Thursday. Thank You to all the staff, parents and students who made the concert such a great success. I would like to wish everyone a happy holiday of relaxing, playing, visiting, travelling and enjoying time with family and friends! See you in January!!

Chidade Maravilhosa

We are getting very excited for our upcoming holiday concert on December 13th! We have all learned so much about a few celebrations around the world and some classes are learning different languages along the way. The grade 5's who will be celebrating "Carnival" with you have learned to sing a song in Portuguese called "Cidade Maravilhosa." After practicing our song for a week or so it came to my attention that this song is actually quite famous in Brazil. In fact it was used in the promo video for the Olympics in Rio in 2016. The students enjoyed this video so here it is!

Celebrations Across the Nations

On Thursday, December 13th, the grade K-5 students will be performing in our annual holiday concert. This year our theme is "Celebrations across the Nations" and each grade or class will be presenting and performing music from different celebrations in different countries around the world! Performances will be at 1:30 and 7:00. Please come to the afternoon show if you are able to so we have ample room at our 7:00 show. We have had many community members answer my call for help with music and dances and I thank them very much for their help. We will once again have our cereal tree in the front hallway collecting cereal and mittens/toques/scarves for Westgrove School.

Remembrance Day Assembly

On Thursday November 8th we will be having a Remembrance Day Assembly in our school gym at 11:00. All are welcome to attend. Our Grade 3-5 Choir, Flute Choir, and Grade 8 Band will be performing as well as various other students with poems and thoughts about Remembrance Day. Hope to see you there to "Take Time to Remember".

Kindergarten Sound Story

The Kindergarten students have had fun in music this week singing and dancing to all sorts of halloween themed songs. They especially liked using instruments to act out the book "The Little Old Lady Who Wasn't Afraid of Anything". We watched a video song of the story and then chose appropriate instrument sounds to go with the sounds in the story. For example the chose drums for the shoes going "Clomp Clomp". They were so good at it and loved trying out the different instruments in the classroom. They have been asking to see the video again and again so I thought I would post it for you to see at home! Happy Halloween!

Down by the Bay

This week in Grade One we will be singing "Down by the Bay" and creating our own version to be made into a book. The students can sing the song with actions, create their own rhyming verse and make their own page for our classroom book complete with drawings and a written sentence. We have had fun thinking of all the funny rhymes we can make. Here is a video to watch to inspire new verses.

Country and Western Music

The grade 2's have started the year by singing about "Trains". Our first song of the year is called "Riding that New River Train" and we have been talking about Country Music because the song is in this style. The students brainstormed an impressive list of instruments that are found in Country Music such as harmonica, guitar, fiddle, banjo ect. I found a great video to show them that really showcases the different sounds that a banjo, guitar and fiddle make and how they are so unique in Country Music. Even more amazing is that the students in the video are so young and able to play these instruments so well. We talked about how much they would have to practice to be that good at their instrument. Here is the video:

Welcome!!

I would like to officially welcome everyone back to Linden Meadows and let you know that I am very excited for the musical opportunities coming our way this year. If you are in Grade 3-5 please come and try out choir! A note will be going out shortly for that. There is also a choral opportunity to sing with the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra this year. I still need to find out more details about what grade of students they are looking for. This will be after Christmas! As always assemblies, holiday concert and possibly a spring musical for the little ones is something to get excited about! So let's get settled in and let the learning begin!! Here is a fun video to get us back into our Do Re Mi's!!!

Summer!!!

Only a couple of days left until the Canada Day Assembly and then........SUMMER!! Yay! Time to rest, play and get excited for a whole new year at school! There is a lot to do in the summer outside and inside. Make sure if its a rainy day you check out the music blog to try out some of our fun music websites to play games or create music at lmmusicnotes.blogspot.com . Also when you are outside playing with your brothers, sisters, cousins, and friends I have a cool website to check out with clapping games. I thought this was this was an interesting thing to know about clapping games! A researcher in Israel conducted the first study of hand-clapping songs. "We found that children in the first, second and third grades who sing these songs demonstrate skills absent in children who don't take part in similar activities. We also found that children who spontaneously perform hand-clapping songs in the yard during recess have neater handwriting, write better and make fewer spelling errors." Yeahhhh! even more reason so learn and play these clapping games and clapping songs! Go ahead give Miss Mary Mack or any other hand clapping game a try! http://funclapping.com/International.php

Boomwacker Composition

The Grade 5's enjoyed working together in groups to come up with some amazing boomwacker compositions! I was impressed by the complex rhythms and the way they were respectful of everyones ideas. Here is one example of the work they did. Compositions are a great way to use everything we have learned together in our music classroom. I have really enjoyed teaching you guys!!

Canada Day

Only 15 days to go and we are still working hard! The choir is practicing to get ready for our annual Canada Day Assembly on the last day of school. We will be singing "I Believe" the song you will have probably heard when we had the Olympics here in Canada. It was originally sung by Nikki Yanofsky. In case anyone else would like to sing along with us that day, here is a video for you to sing along to! The words repeat alot so its pretty easy to catch on. We will hopefully have the lyrics up on the screen for everyone as well. Thanks to all my committed choir students!!! I know the weather is nice and I really appreciate you sticking with it! Here we goooo!!!! So excited for the Olympics!

Alphabet Action Songs

For the past few month the Kindergarten students have been learning a song for every letter of the alphabet. The program is called Alphabet Action Songs. For each letter, a phonics song AND an action song were learned. The kids loved them so much and even started to use them in their writers workshop strategies for sounding out words. Research has demonstrated that the use of music and movement will really help the students to learn the letters and the sounds that the letter makes. The songs are so much fun that the students didn't even realize how much they were learning!

Naming Notes

http://www.teachingideas.co.uk/music/namethatnote.htm I would like to draw attention to one of the games in the music links section of the blog. The grade Three's will start learning the names of the notes on the treble clef staff in the coming weeks and the Grade Four's and Five's are always needing to review this skill as well so they can read their notes even faster. We have been playing a downloaded game called Staff Wars on our smart board but thought I would highlight this website so that students can practice at home. As always if you are needing help with anything come and see me for an appointment! Have Fun!

Wonderland Animoto

Take a Look! Lots to Celebrate!

Music Monday

Congratulations to everyone who was in or helped make "Wonderland" as grand success. We are so proud of each and every one of you!! Now on to the next bit of excitement at our school. Music Monday is on Monday May 7th this year and we will be celebrating in our school along with everyone else in Canada!! It is so exciting to think that everyone in Canada will be singing "Tomorrow is Coming" at the same time! With all the different time zones we will be singing the song at 11:00 loud and strong. There will be more performances by the music students at our school. A day of celebration that we have music in our schools and many children do not have this opportunity. We are very lucky!

Wonderland!

Wonderland is only 2 weeks away and the buzz around the whole musical is that it is going to be AMAZING!! Make sure you get your tickets and bring your family to come and see this wonderful musical. Fun for everyone! The students have worked so hard on acting, singing and dancing to make this a performance to remember. Performances are April 17th at 7:00, April 18th at 1:15 and April 18th at 7:00.Get your tickets now!!

Silver Medal

Congratulations to the Grade 3-5 Choir on their Silver Medal at the Winnipeg Music Festival! We celebrated with our "Silver Party" complete with cake and dancing today on the last day before Spring Break! Thank You to everyone for your hard work and to the parents as well for your support. We continue on with Choir after Spring Break getting ready for Music Monday on Monday May 7 and various assemblies as well!

Tacky the Penguin

The Grade 1's and Grade 1&2 Reder had alot of fun putting on our "Tacky the Penguin" plays this year. We learned about the instruments in the music classroom and which ones would work well to describe different words in the story. Our sound stories came alive beautifully! Congratulations to all the students for their hard work and bravery for performing on their own in front of an audience. We topped off our unit by making our own "Tacky's" and posting them on the big bulletin board on the hallway near the lost and found. If any parents missed the presentations and would like a copy please bring a CDR to me I will give you a copy!

Viva Brazil!!!

On Friday March 2 we were treated to a very exciting performance from "Viva Brazil" a Capoeira group from Winnipeg. Capoeira is a Brazilian martial art that combines elements of dance and music. The students were engaged in the drumming, and of course the flips and kicks that the dancers did. Mrs.Dueck has more information about getting involved in Capoeira or if you would like to see them again make sure you go to the Brazilian pavilion at Folklorama this summer! The picture is a little blurry but their leader was so fast and just wouldn't stop moving!!

Orchestra Families

Grades 1 -5 are learning about the families of the orchestra and the instruments in them. The Grade 2's had fun today playing a game on the internet sorting the instruments into their families. Check it out at home by clicking on the link below.

http://www.nyphilkids.org/games/main.phtml?

Choir Festivals!!

This year the Grade 3-5 Choir will be singing in two festivals. Our very own Pembina Trails Sings (Feb.15) and The Winnipeg Music Festival (Mar.6). We will be singing two selections; The Cuckoo Clock Duet and Celtic Lullaby. I have found a cute video of two girls singing the Cuckoo Clock Duet that I would like to share with you.

I Love to Read Month

I Love to Read month is just around the corner and for our kick off assembly we will be singing "The Hockey Song" by Stompin' Tom Connors! The theme for our month of reading will be hockey with a focus on the Jets! Practice the words so we can all sing loud and proud at the assembly!


Can you find the spelling mistake in the video?

Welcome Back!!

Welcome back everyone! We have a very exciting term ahead of us including, Pembina Trails Sings, The Winnipeg Music Festival, and "Wonderland" The Musical. In our classroom we are looking forward to Tacky the Penguin, The Planets, Caribbean Music, and going to the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra! Up first, the Grade Two students on January 17th, that's next Tuesday already!!