Bring on the Snow!

I know! I'm sorry, but that's the name of our holiday concert musical this year!! "Bring on the Snow" is well in the hearts and minds of our students right now and we will be ready to bring you an exciting concert on Tuesday Dec. 8 at 1:30 and 7:00 PM.(Monday Dec.7 Grandparents Dress Rehearsal 1:30). The singers, actors, tech team and teachers are all working very hard to make this a concert that will not be forgotten. Please make sure you read the note that has gone home around tickets for our concert this year and the reasons behind this. If there is anyone who would like to help find/make props, help with costumes please email me at the school soon. Thank You in advance! Enjoy the Show!

Garden of Remembrance

I would like to just say that I am so proud of how respectful and thoughtful our school was at our Remembrance Day Service on Tuesday. The beautiful flowers we made to honour the men and women who has served in the war was an amazing display today. The music, words and behavior at the assembly was exactly as it should be. Thank You to everyone who helped in making our service so beautiful. Here is a picture of our garden.

Mindset in the Music Classroom

This year our staff at Linden Meadows will be learning more about Mindset in the classroom. We believe that a growth mindset will lead to a desire to learn and work hard to achieve your goals. I am very much in agreement with this learning strategy and believe that having a positive attitude towards learning music goes a long way in our classroom. Music is not always an easy thing but everyone can sing and dance and everyone can learn to play an instrument. Practice will always be the key to our success in the music classroom. So when we start practicing for our holiday concert and begin our journey learning to play the recorder remember these words and don't give up!

Grade 3-5 Choir

The Grade 3-5 choir is busy getting ready to perform for the Remembrance Day Assembly in November. they are singing one of my favourite songs "Song of Peace" which is a partner song with Dona Nobis Pacem (Grant us Peace). The video below is for practicing at home as the voice on the recording is in a good range for us to practice at home.

Grade 1 and 2 Choir

I am so excited that we now have a choir for the Grade 1's and the Grade 2's. This is something that we have never had before at Linden Meadows School! The best part, is that it is during the school day and I get them for one extra class!! We have started out our choir rehearsals talking about singing posture. This is one very important aspect of singing! If we can get this right, everything else will fall into place quite smoothly. Our bulletin board reads "Don't have Despicable singing posture!" I usually don't like throwing negative statements around my classroom but this one is hilarious to the kids and they really get what I mean when I say it! I never thought it would be such a popular saying! I borrowed the picture below but this is what ours "sort of"

looks like with Mrs. Dueck's drawing of a minion!!

Welcome Back!

Welcome Back Linden Meadows! I am so happy to be back and have a lot of new ideas and lessons to share with you this year. Make sure you check back on the blog for any information you might need about the music room and upcoming performances. Get ready for singing, recorders, musicals, drumming, and dancing!!

Gold Winning Choir!

So excited to tell everyone that the Grade 3-5 choir received a gold rating at the Winnipeg Music Festival yesterday! Congratulations to each and every student who attended rehearsals, practiced along with the videos and worked at home to memorize the words to the songs. All our hard work and attention to details paid off in the end. A big thank you to Mrs. Cannons and all of the extra time she has given us to practice and attend rehearsals with us. Enjoy and let's get back at it with some new songs next week!

Oboe and English Horn Presentation 2015

Today we had an Oboe and English Horn presentation for the grade 2's and in a couple of weeks another presentation for the Grade 5 students. The students learned about the history of the instruments, how they are made, how sound is produced and even learned that all professional Oboe and English Horn players make their own double reeds!! Since we had just been to the WSO on Jan.20, we knew about these woodwind instruments and it was really neat to see them up close and personal. The grade 2's enjoyed passing around the cane that was imported from France to be made into reeds. They also had a lot of very good questions like "When did you learn how to play the oboe" and how is the English Horn made? Thank You to one of our LM parents Mrs. Wright for taking the time to come and in show us her oboe. You should have heard her play, it was amazing! No wonder she sometimes plays with the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, we are very lucky.

Fairy Tales

This month for "I Love to Read" month, our school is focusing on Fairy Tales and we are going to have fun with this theme in the music room as well. The Grade 4's have already started learning a song from a very new fairy tale that has been made into a musical. They will have something very special to perform at the end of the month assembly! The Kindergartens are going to have some fun with Goldilocks, the grade 2's have sung a funky song about everyone's favourite Gingerbread Man. The Grade 1's have been working hard to get a non-traditional fairy tale ready for performance as well. The Grade 3's are in the middle of a very intense unit on "The Planet's" so we are going to take a break one of these days to learn about Waltzing Matilda, a folk song from Australia. Even though, some of these on not traditionally fairy tales, we are going to have fun with them and see if they fit in some of the fairy tale criteria that we will be learning about.The Grade 5's will be learning about a fairy tale from the Caribbean since we are learning about Caribbean music and culture this term. Below is the book that we are going to be reading together "Jolly Mon" with a song by Jimmy Buffet to go with it.

Dvorak's Symphony #9 "From the New World"

The grade 5 students are listening to classical music these days in preparation for their trip to the WSO and the symphony choir is very busy preparing their songs. One of the pieces that we have looked at is Dvorak's Symphony #9 "From the New World". The choir will be singing with the symphony for this piece. We learned that the English Horn is featured in this piece and that it is entitled "Largo" which means slow. We also learned a new rhythm tam-ti. It is beautiful and another way to hear our music at home. Each student has the recorder music for the horn part if they wish to try it at home. I found an online listening map to go with the song. Make sure you pick the Largo movement and enjoy! http://listeningadventures.carnegiehall.org/nws/splash.html

Grade 3-5 Choir - Murasame

The Choir is busy getting ready for the Winnipeg Music Festival which is happening in March. We are focusing on a difficult song called "Murasame", a beautiful Japanese melody. The students have been asking for a recording to practice with so I though this video would work well for that. I chose this video in particular because you can hear the two parts very clearly for practicing. Enjoy!

Symphony Choir

Welcome back everyone! Hope you all had a fabulous winter break!! We are back into the swing of things at LM and one of the groups that is getting on things right away is the Symphony Choir. We are 25 Grade 5 music students who have signed up for the music club at the beginning of the year or showed interest in having some musical enrichment opportunities. We are very excited to be a part of a 200 voice choir made up of students from the Pembina Trails School Division!!! We will be singing with the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra on February 18th and we have a lot of work to do. We started talking about the choir, trying on sizes for shirts, and took a look at the songs that we will be singing. I am very excited about the music! One of the songs we will be singing is called "One Voice" written by Manitoba born Ruth Moody of the Wailin' Jennys. It is a really nice song and I thought I would post a video of them singing it for you.