Music Curriculum Units

Mulready Students in PK engage in tons of movement, dancing, instrument playing, and singing. Students experience opposites such as fast/slow, loud/quiet, big/small and high/low. Pitched and unpitched classroom instruments allow students to hear and see a variety of different sounds. PK students begin to learn how to use their singing voices and how their bodies can move to music by moving their own body in a safe way by chanting rhymes, singing, dancing, playing games and using puppets!

Students in K: continue to explore their singing voices by chanting rhymes, playing singing games and singing with puppets. In Kindergarten we focus on opposites; fast/slow, high/low and loud/quiet. We learn many singing games, movement games and chants to help differentiate the opposites. K students also explore how their bodies can safely move in musical ways while playing singing and movement games. Classroom instruments and movement props are commonly used in Kindergarten to keep a steady beat!

Students in First Grade: learn about instruments of the Orchestra through movement and listening lessons based on the book and recordings of Carnival of the Animals by French Composer Camille Saint-Saens. Students also begin to read standard written rhythm notation and begin to create simple four beat patterns (using learning resources).

Students in Second Grade: learn about instruments of the Orchestra and why they are classified and sorted into specific families. Second graders experience live instrument demonstrations, recordings, listening lessons, instrument making lessons and a featured work by Ukrainian composer, Sergei Prokofiev called Peter and the Wolf. Rhythm notation is reviewed and expanded on through various games and center activities in preparation for third grade recorder.

Students in Third Grade: demonstrate their note reading and rhythm reading through playing recorder by earning recorder karate belts. Recorder Karate is used which is a recorder teaching method using 8 familiar tunes, each one progressively harder than the last. Students are encouraged to practice at home to prepare for their "belt testing." At the end of May students perform in a Third Grade Performance to showcase their hard work. Throughout the year students also participate in center activities and games such as staff wars, bean bag toss, busted, beat blocks and color by note.

Students in Fourth Grade: create body percussion compositions and share their composition with the class. Students also use their musical knowledge to write a melodic composition using notes and rhythms that they can perform. Fourth grade students also learn a new rhythm value and then create a "Rhythm Pizza" which allows students to visually see the relationship between note values- a concept similar to learning fractions! Recorder challenge songs, duets, and new songs are used in fourth grade to enrich the curriculum and encourage the students to continue to practice their recorder.