Music Programme Classes 1-5 Elementary School
MUSIC, SOUND and SILENCE
The Elementary School’s Music Programme is designed to build individual awareness, knowledge and creativity, directed at all forms of music.
“To instil an appreciation and respect for culture we must give the children the tools and information necessary. Children have expansive and fertile imaginations so why should we limit our music classes to rules and procedures that are not effective any more. It is a challenge to keep the children’s attention because they need waves of intellectual information, and a wide variety of stimuli including images, colours and sounds.”
Dr. Karen Zereconsky
Music is cross curricular
Over the year the children will develop the skill of how to listen and appreciate classical music with vivid curiosity. I’m teaching the children to approach music through math, science, physics, art and nature and the world around us and to use music as a tool for learning more about these subjects too. The children are going to be exposed to classical and ethnomusic from different parts of the world.
Engaging Children in Classical Music
Once they have the tools to connect with Classical music they will be curious and stimulated to go to concerts and to listen to Classical music and finally grow up to be adults with a rich background of culture and also rich in personal qualities and traits.
Music at Home
At home I’d like the children to keep their ears open, listen and hear the sounds and music of our planet, nature, the sounds of the earth and to also seek out ethnomisic and classical music that inspires them.
Music During the Year
Over the year the elementary course will:
- Look at music and its origins
- Explore how music connects to science, art and maths
- Sounds, animals and orchestral music – exploring how different musical instruments can be used to represent animal sounds.
- A field trip where the children will learn to listen to nature and hear her sounds.
- Poetry, music, reflection and rhythm
- Listen to different languages and their inflections (Gregorian Chants)
- Setting a text to music
- Significance of numbers
- Maths in music
- Emotions in music
- Learning about concerts
- Going to a concert
The types of assignments the children may do:
- A written assignment where they describe how art, maths and science relate to music. They will choose three classical pieces of music and describe the colours the music inspires and match some painting to pieces of music.
- Composing a story and setting it to music, reciting it in chant.
Music is cross curricular: Science
We started this module by introducing the children to sounds from a NASA recording from the planet Saturn.
The children are asked to describe what they heard. The Greeks and Romans thought that there were 7 planets. The children went on to discover the importance of the number 7, naming examples of important groups of 7. Some of these are:
- the 7 colours of the rainbow,
The Magic Number 7
- 7 notes names,
- 7 wonders of the world,
- 7 days of the week,
- 7 directions,
- 7 Hills of Rome ….
They watched and listened to a video describing the planets in song form and they memorized the names using a mnemonic and they learned how Pluto was eliminated as a planet in 2006.
“My Very intElligent Mother Just Served Us Noodles.”
They learned the names of the notes and finally they listened to the Symphony of Gustav HOSLT entitled THE PLANETS (movement of Saturn) on the video screen.
As they watched and listened I pointed out the different instruments and asked them why the tempo changed at one point. They discovered that the planets do not orbit the sun in a circle at a regular rate and in turn the composer Holst, copied this essential ingredient from his knowledge of the planets.
This lesson taught them the order of the planets, the names of the notes, propelled them to think of the number seven and its consequences, not only in music but in the world and they listened and watched a Symphony orchestral work by GUSTAV HOLST.
