Music education can help spark a child's imagination or 
                              ignite a lifetime of passion. When you provide a child with 
                              new worlds to explore and challenges to tackle, 
                              the possibilities are endless. 

~ Hillary Clinton

This quote captures really well what is at the heart of the elementary music program.  Kindergarten students use their imagination and make a connection between mechanical sounds and the concept of "beat" in music.  As they move to the tick-tock sounds of a clock, they experience the steadiness of beat.  Similarly, Grade 1 students continue their study of "beat" and extend their conceptual understanding to include "ta" and its corresponding rest.  

Grade 2 students continue to look at story and how to tell these stories through music.  After the story of Nanabosho and Kitchie Odjig, they will do a musical rendition of the Raven stories.  Grade 3 students continue to create musical questions and answers by using a variety of musical rhythms.  Grade 4 students continue to refine their Alberta homesteaders' piece by featuring on "complementary rhythms" in their work.  Grade 5 students continue to perform pieces featuring the "swing."

As part of the celebration of Chinese New Year, Kindergarten students learned a short New Year song in Chinese.  Grade 1 students continued to explore the concept of "beat" by moving to it.  They also extended their solfège study to include la.  Grade 2 students continued telling musical stories.  They began performing a two-voiced texture on barred instruments.

Grade 3 students started experimenting with musical questions and answers.  They looked into elements that give a musical phrase a sense of closure.  Grade 4 students took on the role of homesteaders as they performed a piece they had created using different rhythmic patterns.  They also started learning about "complementary rhythm" which allows them to create multi-voiced texture.

Grade 5 students began by experiencing what jazz music is like.  They played multi-voiced textures which feature the "swing" feel.  Apart from that, they performed complex rhythmic pieces on various body percussion sounds. 

After choosing various instruments to represent the main characters in the story Mother Frost, students played this.  Through this learning task, students learned to follow the conductor's cues.  Grade 1 students explored the concept of "beat" and came up with examples of mechanical sounds that give us the "beat".  They also played barred instruments for the first time.  Through this learning task, they explored the different timbres of the barred instruments.  Grade 2 students continued telling musical stories.  This time, they chose a First Nations story. 

Grade 3 students continued their study on "musical legos" and extended their knowledge of the solfège system to include la, sol, mi, re and doh.  Grade 4 students created more rhythmic pieces as they made a connection between music and their social studies curriculum, i.e. Alberta.

Grade 5 students said goodbye to the general music program as they will be moving on to the Band program for the second semester.  The students who were attending the Band program will be attending the general music program starting next week.