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: